Skype Much?

By Michael Hunter (Contributing Writer)

Fresh out of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Verizon Wireless and Skype have announced a new partnership between the two huge companies. Verizon Wireless 3G Smartphone users with data plans will soon be able to make and receive unlimited Skype to Skype voice calls to ANY Skype user ANYWHERE! The new partnership also offers competitive Skype Out calling rates to international phone numbers as well as the ability to see your contacts online status’ and send and receive instant messages. In March this Skype service will be available for all of the Verizon Android and BlackBerry users.

Here’s the part that puzzles me, the official press release has this joint venture listed as “exclusive”, but I’m pretty sure I have Skype installed on my iPhone. Not only that, AT&T lowered the flood gates and now allow for Voice Over IP applications to be downloaded from the App Store. As popular as Skype is on the iPhone, it still hasn’t seen an update since the great news came out by way of AT&T and Apple. Well, I happened to bump into a video and written post on Skype’s very own blog site stating exactly why we have yet to see an update:

“You may have seen other apps offering calls over 3G, but we’re holding ours back for a little bit longer. Why? So that we can give you the very best audio quality we can. When our 3G-capable Skype for iPhone app is released, it’ll let you make calls in wideband audio, giving you greater clarity and fidelity – because that’s what you expect from Skype.”

So just how “exclusive” is this Verizon and Skype VOIP 3G deal? It’s looking like for now (and just for now!) we must continue to use Wi-Fi to make our Skype calls on an iPhone. At any rate,this is very cool offering from Verizon and AT&T the same.

(via: Skype, Skype Blog)