Fuze Mobility cites a Bloomberg / Business Week article about the next move by Skype with Verizon Wireless in the USA.
What I find funny is that Hutchison Whampoa may be a Hong Kong company, but the success of the Skypephone,that already has the Skype service running on it, has been in London using iSkoot’s technology initially. Based on some recent experiences in London I think Skype is beginning to roll in their own technology in the UK as some of the original functionality seems to have been dropped, possibly unintentionally.
For USA users on Verizon, likely with Droids, Blackberries and a few other devices, Skype over 3G will be the first real Skype mobile play beyond Jailbroken iPhones and Wi-Fi enabled iPod touch devices of significance. In the past Verizon and Sprint phones running the Windows Mobile OS have had some Skype but never with a fully integrated network play. That means Skype has some technology within the carrier vs. simply running over the carriers dumb pipe.
For Skype users, the experience of connectivity takes on a whole new meaning, and I fully expect this to drive sales of data plans for Verizon. I would not be surprised to see some Canadian carrier also coming on board in the near future, as this is just the start of a Skype over 3G initiative, including the iPhone and likely the iPad over the next year to 18 months.
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