Skype Competitor Coming from The Telcos?

This story by Om is rather interesting on the possibility of a global telco led initiative to compete with Skype.

My take is that it would have a better chance of succeeding if the cable companies were involved, and not on the sidelines. Here in the USA they control more of the access than the telcos with the kind of pipe that makes voice work better.

There's one more point that needs to be raised. It's the crossing over of two of the most powerful communications bodies in the world. The GSMA (mobile) with the ITU (wireline and all communications). The companies that are listed are very active with them and to me that has to spell some degree of concern for eBay and Skype.

It will be interesting to see how the new Skype CEO responds to the challenge.

Then again, we can always look at Concert (which failed) as an example of how in the past ideas like this have been tried......and the end result.