Skype Drops The Bomb On VoIP Market

For the remainder of 2006, calls made from SkypeOut within the US and Canada to any landline or mobile phone will be free. No strings attached. If you're reading this somewhere in the United States or Canada, eBay, which purchased Skype for $2.6 billion, and could pony up another $1.5 billion if Skype hits a few financial goals. EBay is promoting the free Skype deal on its homepage. There isn't an associated promotion with it, yet. Shaving six months off of its available time to make that $1.5 billion in bonuses doesn't look like a logical step for Skype, so we expect to see some type of integrated promotion, possibly with The only condition is that we have said free SkypeOut within the US and Canada is guaranteed to last until the end of this year - that is, until December 31, 2006. We're not quite sure yet what we will do after that. Maybe we extend the free period, maybe not. You'll hear more about this towards the end of the year. Until then, happy calling. A number of companies like Vonage, Yahoo, and AOL have launched various VoIP services, with exceptionally low prices. None of them are free as Skype is now. They need to hope Skype does not build up a substantial mass of new or converted frequent VoIP users for its service, because no one likes to compete with a price of free in the marketplace. Tag: Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo! My Web |