With the signing of four carrier termination agreements last week, one with Level3, and others with Colt, Teleglobe and iBasis, Skype has released the first official version of it’s Peer 2 Peer VoIP client.
But what’s more interesting is the future offering from Skype, to be called Skype Plus that will actually link up a real telephone number to Skype, and their plans to work with cellular carriers and handset manufacturers.
But one weakness seems to be they won’t be a PBX replacement, or at least not yet. This opens the door wider for Popular Telephony whose Peerio444 platform is clearly aimed at that market.
Also, in hearing some accounts of Brideport Networks, a company which has raised over $35 million in VC financing to date, and has some super smart, ex Genuity (BBN) Voice platform folks, the crossing over of WiFi, GSM, CDMA and VoIP are all in the formative stages of being unleashed, as their nearing deals with carriers to enable one number, true follow me service capabilities, that work regardless of platform.
The idea of connectivity via telephony is about to get very interesting, and Skype is opening the media’s doors, for all the rest to explain what they can do more easily, and more importantly, more securely.
The difference between Skype and Peerio444 is that within the last two month a lot of things happened with Skype and nothing with Peerio. On http://www.peerio.com there is an annoncement that another beta will happen within the next week, and this for more then two month now.