Mark Evans has it nailed in his post this morning about Skype.
He's another one who is seeing the Emperor's New Clothes for what they are...or to put it another way, the wolf in sheeps clothing.
Skype WANTED to be a phone company, but failed to anticipate the Vonage fiasco's of E-911 tragedies. As when that happened and the FCC started to bite, Vonage filed their Ex-Parte motion and while the FCC is saying some things that may make Yahoo and MSN feel good (neither offer PSTN type In/Out features) Skype is caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place.
All of that said, the issue here is not that Skype is wrong in what they are setting out to be. The issue is that the technological infrastructure in the middle is not yet up to where the end point technology already has reached. While the RBOC's and the incumbents can do a lot to keep the upstarts at a distance for now, they won't delay the inevitable of what Skype and others in the P2P telephony space are starting. The key to the solution is when one of the traditional telco's breaks ranks and leaves the comfortable world of Alcatel, Lucent and Nortel, and moves like a swift attack fleet into the future.
Sadly, I don't see that starting here in the USA, but would expect to see it out of Asia first.