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Skype may have to close

Business IT - Technology

Skype is the largest carrier of international cross-border telephony in the world (reports suggest around 8% of all traffic) – much of this is free, but an increasing number of customers are using the paid Skype Out service – amounting to 8.4 billion minutes in 2008.

It seems crazy to this writer that eBay would have purchased most of Skype.  Some of the fundamental peer-to-peer components remained with the original developers.  Obviously, eBay is racing to re-implement these components in-house but they warn that there is no guarantee of success.

There are two interesting outcomes from this.  Firstly, unless a solution is negotiated very quickly, the planned IPO for the first half of next year will have to be placed on hold (or even killed off entirely).

Secondly, if the June 2010 case goes against eBay, a lot of people will have to return to the POTS (plain old telephony service) to carry their calls.

Right now, if I were an alternative to Skype, I’d be shouting my services as loudly as possible.  Alternately, just google free voip calls – you’ll be inundated with suggestions!