I learned today that Richard Stastny was yet another fan of The Tipping Point asking if Skype has reached it. "Blink" and it may be too late. However it was his post combined with the Mathaba.net interview with Niklas and mobile phone comments that made his 10 lessons for Telecom even more relevant. I'd like to add a few more.
11: Ignore presence at your peril!
12: Enable access to location based information, and 1000's of innovations will bloom.
13. Eliminate steps, become device agnostic.
14. Think personal, empower the individual; controls in their hands
15. Act like a brand. (Look at Skype and how it spawns ideas; Skype Home, Skype Personal, SkypeOut, SkypeChat, SkypeMe etc. There is no way to register them all.)
Richard provided a nice example for mobile contact lists; "So imagine you have a mobile phone which is Skype enable if you buy it, you just have to enter your Skype-ID, get your contacts (they are now centralized) and can start immediately calling all your Skype buddies, all E.164 numbers and you can be called by anybody via your SkypeIn number at any WiFi hotspot or whatever your connectivity is, even via GPRS or 3G (but watch out here. they rip you off with data fees, especially if you are roaming)". VoIP and ENUM
Can we go even further? A contact list that follows you means you can become device agnostic, even the throwaway mobile may have a place.This same convergence of buddylist and mobility provides new opportunity to merge presence information with location based info. Yet I see no mobile carriers opening up their API's.
Then think personal. The presence controls must be in the users hands. Shared presence information may also mean my phone directory only needs those who are online and available right now. Plus there is a whole new set of opportunities available on what profiles are shared and where profile information is shared. How does the Plaxo model (of email contacts) stack up in a world of Skype contacts?
"That we’re now doing is we're also working on Skype for mobile platforms. Recently we announced partnerships with Motorola, and also with i-mate. The objective is to make Skype available on mobile devices because you will see mobile phones that have both cellular and WiFi technology. Then you can run Skype on those mobile phones. So we are currently looking into a few operating systems, but we haven't made any official decisions"... Niklas Zennstrom Mathaba.net
. Nov 7-9. San Francisco. 
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