.. in the UK at least. Today, as one partner participating in the 3 X-Series service announcement by Hutchison Whampoa's 3 Group, Skype has announced its first truly mobile offering where Skype users can make "free" Skype-to-Skype calls on a mobile phone. Starting December 1, 3 Group will launch a new flat fee mobile broadband Internet service in the UK. In the press release related to this announcement Skype CEO Niklas Zennström said:

With 3, I am very proud to say that for the first time, our users can now try out making Skype calls on the move using a mobile phone. We always want to delight our users by letting them try out new ways of keeping in touch. This is a real milestone for Skype because now you can use Skype beyond the PC, no matter where you happen to be.

CIO Now has an excellent detailed description of the impact for Skype; the key points being:

• 3 Group will launch the new X-Series service December 1 in the U.K. and roll it out to the other countries in which 3 Group operates (including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Australia and Hong Kong) in early 2007.
• While it will be a flat-fee mobile broadband Internet service, no pricing has yet been announced.

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Our friend U. Yogu, a Ph.D. chemistry student at National Taipei University of Technology, attended a concert there today. Skype partner PCHome sponsored the event, had a booth and gave out prizes, like a Skype ball with a headset inside. More photos from the event.

"Skype is currently not doing business in Korea, nor does it have a telecoms operation in Korea. Should Skype begin to conduct business in Korea, either directly or with a local partner, all applicable laws will of course be followed." This on Monday from DongChol Beh, Skype Market Manager for Korea. Parsing carefully, this means you cannot buy Skype credits if you are in South Korea (or is it if Skype believes you are in South Korea? or you can't buy it with a South Korean credit card?). You can spend Skype credits if you have them on SkypeOut to South Korea land lines.

It's in response to headlines like:

• ZDNet Korea: Skype, new memberships halted!
• VoIP news: Skype in trouble with South Korea government
• The Korea Times: Skype Probed for Unregistered Marketing
• 21talks: Skype accused (again) of illegal practices
• Strategy Page: South Korea Puts the Screws to U.S. Troops
• Jan in Malaysia: South Korean government held off on its plan to ban the use of VOIP

Hmmm.

• Auction & Skype's Korean site.
• Launch announcement from last month with disclaimers about SkypeIn and SkypeOut.
• Notice from Skype about the continuing problem.

It's a story of growing pains, of Skype moving in to a country, running into an obstacle, and backing off to re-enter correctly.

It's also about large local phone companies lobbying hard with government regulators to restrict competition from VoIP. (Sound familiar?)

Follow-up questions unanswered by press time.

• Was Skype doing business in Korea before?
• When, for which products, and in what manner?
• When and why did Skype stop?

If Skype or its partners are subject to fines for infractions, then we may not get answers for a while.

Skype clearly plans to serve the South Korean market with SkypeIn and SkypeOut. What about PayPal? At the moment, PayPal only lets South Koreans withdraw money, not send money. This must be tough for eBay since South Korea is eBay's fourth largest market, after the United States, Germany, and the UK. More than 34 million Koreans use the Internet, about 70% of the population.

The regulatory embarassment, customer inconvenience, and deferred cash flow must be difficult for Skype's portal partner, Auction. It's unclear if Auction-Skype is a joint venture, an Auction project, a Skype project, or a Skype subsidiary. UPDATE: It is an Auction project, working on behalf of Skype, its sister company.

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Deal done. Retail VOIP in the offing? Views later.

eBay has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Full text of news release...

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「日経産業新聞」1面掲載
ネット電話で通話料節約
トラボックス
運送会社にスカイプ配布

This is a great example of a strong and healthy social network migrating to a new channel. It's no fun if you're the only one with a fax machine, right?

Taiwan market: Skype subscriptions exceed the two million mark in July. Subscriptions for the PChome-Skype peer-to-peer (P2P) voice over IP (VoIP) application surpassed two million earlier this month. In addition, the number of paid user subscriptions for the SkypeOut service is close to 150,000.

[DigiTimes]

by Jan Geirnaert, an IT/Internet Business Consultant in Malaysia.

I have worked here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as the IT manager and network administrator for a small non-IT business. One of the many things I did is cutting the cost of the phone bill by implementing Skype as a VoIP solution. These thoughts are not purely IT/technical. My wage was paid by the cost-savings on the telecom-bill.

Here are some issues to be taken into account before implementing Skype. What you read below is how I did it, these are my personal experiences. The standard setup-recommendations can be found on the Skype web site.

Make your case gently and with numbers

Explain properly to all involved management levels and teams (especially Finance and higher management-levels) what the solutions consist off. Don’t go too much into IT-technical issues. Focus on the advantages and the low cost (only your time and skill are important here). Take into account that VoIP (Skype included) is something new and a low-level entry is better than no entry at all. If you make things sound complicated, it just won’t work.

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Mindmapping by yourself is slow, hard work. But talk with others and the ideas and organization just flow. In Japanese or with Google translation to English. More on brainstorming. Does Skype open up your creative juices?

James Seng is running an exciting experiment with Wi-Fi handsets and SIP at Apricot 2005. Every attendee is able to use the new phones in the same old way. It's an important step. Wonder what they will be doing at TED in this regard this year.