Skype is one of the hottest services around having been downloaded, at the time of writing, 173,249,041 times (according to its website) in a mere 3 years of existence. What makes this program/service so popular is quite obvious, it’s simple to use, works extremely well, and offers free voice communication to its hundreds of millions of users. Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, founders of Skype, recognized the incredible potential of their creation by using the internet so effectively in a way never done before. Skype works so well infact that eBay decided to acquire them for a hefty 2.6 billion dollars in up-front cash in order to enhance the experience of their (ebay’s) buyers and sellers. I would have to agree that the added communication medium between buyer and seller will foster a much better environment for eBay’s customers and will probably help to get a lot of those ‘unsure’ people off of the fence and into the bidding frenzy. A great purchase for the auction giant but if eBay’s future use of the Skype service is to only enhance customer communication they are missing out on something much bigger.

Imagine if you will the good old days years ago of the then-sprouting internet and World Wide Web. How many of you can remember having to pay for your email service before a ton of free webmail services were around? Paying for email was just an assumed expense by many because, well, who couldn’t live without email. Time went by, technology and the internet progressed and then one day someone decided email should be free (hotmail). Then came MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and the latest GMail to replace all fee-based email forever. The main point being a once assumed expense by many was gotten rid of by means of the internet.

What does Skype have to do with all of this? Follow with me for a second. Before cell phones, people we used to paying the local phone company for wired phone service directly to their home or office. Then this mobile phone revolution came along like a giant brush fire engulfing pretty much everyone in its path. As a college student I understand this more than most as seeing someone using a cell phone on campus is as common an occurance as seeing a car driving down the road. To go a step further, I personally do not have a wired phone line at college or at home. Why would I, it’s an added expense as far as I’m concerned.

With the mind boggling popularity of cell phones I think it is safe to draw three conclusions. One, human beings like to have the ability to communicate with peers and family members at pretty much all times of the day. Two, they don’t like to be restricted to a confined area/location when doing this. Three, they are willing to pay good money for the conveinece. This is where the idea and potential behind Skype comes into play.

Before we know it, paying for mobile voice communication will be a thing of the past. The combination of tiny powerful mobile devices, increasingly widespread wireless internet access (WiMAX), and Skype[-like] technology will make this vision a reality. The technology isn’t far off, Skype is already available for the PDA, wireless internet coverage is increasing at an extremely rapid pace.

Like email going from a fee-based service to a free service with advertisments in the user inteface (UI), voice communication will soon follow its path. Advertisments can easily be inserted into this future technology, whether it be visually in the UI of the program itself or if a short audio advertisment is played while the call is connecting. These ads could easily be targeted by the information given by the user upon registering for the service – imagine the awesome potential this could have for ad revenues. There will of course be an option to pay a small periodic fee to get rid of these ads for users that want a pure experience (consider the amount of people currently paying mucho bucks for cellular service). But for the vast majority these minor ads are a small price to pay for the service provided to them.

Can you see the vision? Johnny walking down the street with his new Skype[ish]-watch built with a tiny mic and speaker/headphone jack. He just bought Halo 6 and wants to tell his friend Billy all about it. So he dials up Billy and while he’s waiting to connect he hears a short ad for the soon to be released Xbox 720. Of course this ad was targeted due to his personal information stating him as a 17 year old male with an interest in electionics and video games. Once the ad is done he is connected to Billy on Billy’s tiny palm-sized Skype[ish] phone talking freely at will with high quality sound and perfect clarity.

Are these crazy ramblings or a semi-accurate guess as to what the future of voice communications may hold for the world? Of course we all know that only time will tell. And hey, if it does become a reality, you’ll know how to reach me.

Edit: Wow. Ironically CNet has published an editoral on the same day as this was published which seems to agree with our prediction that VoIP is going mobile.