It was in a conversation with Skype CEO Josh Silverman last fall that I raised the question: When will eBay spin off the mammoth Internet calling service via a public offering? Of course, he didn’t answer the question. The answer to that question came today, when… Read More »

Skype Founders Niklas Zennstorm and Janus Friis are talking with private equity firms KKR, Warburg Pincus, Providence Equity Partners and Elevation Partners to raise money to buy Skype back from eBay, reports the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog. According to the report, the private equity… Read More »

By now you know that I think the Skype-for-iPhone app is simply awesome. After spending some more time with it, I’ve come up with four things that would make the app not only better, but nearly indispensable. The software needs to be much more tightly integrated with… Read More »

Skype will release a version of its VoIP application for the iPhone and the iPod touch on Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. I was the first to report news of the pending release last week. (Gee, thanks for giving us credit, WSJ and CNET’s… Read More »

Truphone, a London-based mobile VoIP startup, tomorrow is expected to introduce a flat-rate plan (TruUnlimited for Landlines) that would allow its customers unlimited calls to landlines in 38 countries for just over $14 a month. In some countries — the U.S., Canada, China and Hong Kong,… Read More »

Exclusive Heads up: A few months ago, I asked Skype CEO Josh Silverman when was he going to launch the iPhone version of the P2P voice and IM service that has now been downloaded more than 405 million times. He smiled and said, “Stay tuned.” And… Read More »

TeleGeography says that cross-border telephone traffic grew 14 percent in 2007 and is estimated to have grown 12 percent in 2008, to 384 billion minutes. Falling prices and rising popularity have flattened the revenues (see graph below the fold). The big bump in minutes (and the… Read More »

Telephony’s Tale of the Tape: Shrinking Telecom

Landline losses at large (U.S.) phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon have become so routine that we stopped paying attention. This graphic in a research report by Leichtman Research brought them back into focus. In 2008, phone companies lost about 7.94 million lines, while cable… Read More »

Skype Now Means Business, Friends the SIP World

Updated: Skype has announced it will play nice with corporate PBX systems that use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). While details thus far are fuzzy, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Skype-for-SIP product will be introduced as a beta product and will be tested by a… Read More »

Nimbuzz Launches a Super Communication App for iPhone

If you asked me what I missed the most about my iPhone, I would have said Truphone, because it was the cheapest and easiest way to call my mom in India. Well, today you can add Nimbuzz to that list. The company just announced a super… Read More »

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