Skype’s founders announced yesterday in Toronto at the VON that they will have two flavors of SKYPE this August.
Skype Plus will offer an area code chosen by the user and voice mail. SKYPE OUT will let you call to PSTN or other VoIP phones with a normal phone number.
SKYPE is sounding more like every other player out there. So while they may be the first in the space to make a big splash, due to the legacy of the founders, the real effort that is catching attention is the efforts in working with third party end-point providers (i.e. hand sets) that will make their service more useful.
In reality, Sipphone, Michael Robertson of MP3.com’s company, was doing a lot of what Skype is doing. They just didn’t make as big of a viral splash.