Voice was not really the issue with another big announcement at MWC in Barcelona: that Skype was to work with Verizon to provide mobile services. It's mostly about the video. By Ian Scales.
"Skype is really not a threat to carriers - we can work in partnership," says Skype's Russ Shaw in an interview about the Verizon deal with Telecom TV's Guy Daniels at the show (see below). And Shaw is right. Carriers have pretty-much got themselves beyond the old revenue-robbing worries over VoIP.
Shaw tells Guy that Skype has done a partnership deal with Verizon which will see Skype on Blackberry and Android handsets first at Verizon, with all the other smartphone platforms to follow. There will be Skype-to-Skype calling, not of course 'Skype-out' charged calls to switched phones.
And the deal is not unique. Other carriers are in the offing, he says, just keep watching this space.
As with the VoLGA/VoLTE squabble, this is not a voice thing. The strategy here for both sides is not to parcel out the voice market, it's to build the video communications applications of tomorrow. Video calling is the big draw here for Verizon, Shaw hints in our Barcelona interview.
According to Shaw, 12 per cent of the international calls made are on Skype and a third of those are already on video.
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Executive Insight: Russ Shaw, GM Mobile, Skype