On March, 2, I published a blog concerning Skype, a P2P net-phoning service, which works really great (excellent sound quality, ease of use, no firewall – routeur – NAT configuration required). We are using this tool intensively since then, and our experience is very good. You cannot imagine the positive impact on costs :-)

One anecdote: the two founders of this voice over IP (VoIP) company are Zennstrom & Friis, well-known as the founders of…KaZaA!

Now, let’s talk about business and strategy:

1) Skype announced a new investment of $19 million (this money is coming from two investors, one of them is Index Ventures, which is also investing in….MySql), to be able to finance the link between this VoIP tool and the traditional phone network. Skype will buy a huge amount of minutes by traditional telephone carriers, and sell them to their clients with a “premium-service”.

2) Skype will announce a deal with a major European cordless home phone maker which will integrate Skype in its phones.

3) Skype will furthermore announce a partnership with Pantronics, a maker of headsets for office and home phones.

Great!!