Skype Adds Calling to Mobile Phones

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Skype announced yesterday software that can be used with 50 Java-enabled mobile phones made by Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson to receive calls from the Skype network and to SkypeIn phone numbers on the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Outgoing calls placed to Skype users and via SkypeOut, its gateway for outbound PSTN calling, will work just in six countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the UK) as well as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

This extension of Skype's offering to mobile phones, with calls placed over data networks operated by cellular carriers, is an interesting mix of models. Skype is, on the one hand, challenging operators high margins in handling voice calls, but, on the other, will require that users of this service have typically expensive data plans over which the calls are placed.

It's possible that the margins on the data side are so good that cell companies can come out ahead. In the U.S., customers typically need at least a $40 per month voice plan to add a $20 to $60 per month data service; the average is closer to $40 per month for unlimited data on the phone. Data rates tend to be higher and not set to unlimited - which means 5 GB per month in the U.S. before carriers start to get agitated - in Europe. Asian nations vary as to the amount and affordability of data plans.

U.S. carriers typically don't allow the kinds of phones that would run Skype's software, as most phones sold here have a mechanism through which authorized software passes before it's allowed to run on a phone and a network. It's unclear to me whether any Java-enabled phone in the U.S. could simply use this software. I expect we'll hear about that soon.

But if you read the fine print on U.S. carriers' descriptions of what they allow over their data networks, you may be in for a surprise, something that signals that money may be there to be made even with Skype-over-cellular. Verizon some months ago added VoIP to its list of approved mobile broadband services--and they were formerly the most restrictive carrier as to what they allowed on their network.