Skype Launching VOIP-Capable Cell Phone with Mobile Carrier "3"

From BusinessWeek:

The Skype cell phone, developed with a software outfit named iSkoot, is equipped with multimedia capabilities and high-speed data for mobile Web browsing. But its most prominent feature is a big button right above the regular keypad to activate Skype's popular service for long-distance and international calls. A press on that button triggers an iSkoot-developed application that brings up a list of a user's Skype "buddies" and regular phone contacts. A click on any entry in that list dials the call.

In essence it sounds like 3 is willing to give up its international call revenues to Skype in exchange for the subscription and local call money, a surprisingly sensible compromise.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of the horribly-named carrier "3," it's because they don't exist in the United States.

Skype Goes Mobile [BusinessWeek.com]

[#1 posted by Simon Greenwood , October 19, 2007 3:51 AM]

3 have been a bit of a rolling disaster in the UK too. They're backed by Hutchison, and paid a fortune for the only independent 3G licence in the UK - all the others were taken by existing mobile phone operators. They launched about five years ago with the first 3G phones, which were blocky and unattractive and their USP was video calls (to other 3 users only, of course), and free clips of Premiership football. Their coverage was practically restricted to urban areas too at first. Since then the phones have got smaller, they did a deal with O2 for coverage where they didn't have masts and have slowly, very slowly, come to terms with the possibility that people *might* use a relatively high speed and reliable data collection for something other than watching football and music videos.
iSkoot is a neat piece of software, a voice only Skype client that runs on Symbian 60 among other platforms. The thinking would appear to be that people will use Skype for overseas calls, for which it would be O2 rather than 3 that collected the transit costs, so 3 is actually probably not losing a great deal of money by allowing Skype calls across their data network. You also may be interested to know that T-Mobile in the UK allow the use of Skype on their Web'n'Walk unlimited data plan, but only if you pay an extra fiver, which also allows your phone to be used as a laptop modem. That's why I don't need no steenkin' iPhone.