99 per month to chat to many in video conferencing

Time is no longer where Skype was an annoying start-up came flying minutes of communication to the telecoms operators. Market specialist for free or cheap 12 has now 20 year. There are 145 million users each month, approximately 7 to pay for one of its "premium" services "A rush hour, i.e. 19: 30 (time universal UTC), more than 27 million people are connected simultaneously yesterday, against 15 million a year earlier at the Barcelona Convention", said the "Echos" Tony Bates, the CEO of the company created in 2003. Skype, which could raise more than $ 100 million in an introduction on the planned stock exchange in the second half of 2011, is now installed, developing partnerships all over the place to become a key player. Monday, in Barcelona, the Group thus announced have concluded an agreement with several Wi - Fi around the world operators, including BT Openzone in the United Kingdom and FON, total more than 500,000 access points. As Skype invoice already some calls (those that are not between two users Skype, essentially), the Skype credit can be used to pay for the Wi - Fi connection. "Instead of going through a number of access providers, travellers are able to use our electronic purse", explains Tony Bates.

Skype is also continuing its offensive of charm with mobile operators. The Group has already signed agreements with Verizon Wireless in the United States, Hutchison 3 in Europe and KDDI to the Japan. It yesterday launched a bid for the operators of the emerging countries, where 3 G coverage high throughput is low. The voice on Internet of Skype solution is optimized for mobilising a minimum of battery and bandwidth resources. In France, the group is not yet reached an agreement with the operators, even if it has been in contact with Free. It must be said that the two heavyweights, Orange and SFR, built long distance links out of the France. So, they have the means to lower the price of international calls. They offer themselves mobile voice on the Internet for some of their clients. Most importantly, millions of French can call free of charge abroad via their "box".

Tony Bates hopes to find common ground: "To reach a billion people on the planet, we need to work with operators, which are an important component of the ecosystem." "Only, in the future, it must provide more services than the voice to continue to pay international calls", he warned. Skype and put on the video, because "it will become the standard. It already represents 40 of the 200 billion minutes of international calls via Skype last year. End of December, the Group launched an application for video calls via the iPhone. "We have had calls 1 million on the first day, and 10 million downloads in two weeks!" exclaimed Tony Bates. This service is free of charge, on the other hand it pay $ 8.99 per month to chat to many in video conferencing. Finally, Skype hopes to diversify its revenues with services such as storage of calls via the Internet.