Whether they know it or not, Skype is suffering from a terminal disease.  A disease inherited from her new parents, eBay and Greed.  Skype is the VOIP creation of Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, also founders of the file sharing application Kazaa and the new peer-to-peer television application Joost. Skype was sold to eBay in September, 2005.

Skype routes calls through other Skype peers on the network which puts an extra burden on those who connect to the Internet without NAT, as their computers and network bandwidth may be used to route the calls of other users.  Interestingly, eBay has alienated these users by increasing the charge for a call in number from $38.00 per year to an unbelievable $60.00 per year.  Discussion of this is widespread on various websites and forums that I have visited.

Skype has also experienced considerable popularity with some business users after incorporating features such as call transfer and auto redial, and the ability to add Skype to the company PBX.  Perhaps eBay wants to concentrate on these business users.

Skype however, depends on the peer to peer nature of its service, and a mass exodus of many of those users could have a detrimental effect on Skype’s ability to handle the traffic.  Make no mistake about it, Skype will lose users.  When the rate increases 40%, alternatives, such as GizmoProject or VoiceStick become more attractive.