Ebay finally announced the part sale of skype.  It was always rather curious why they bought it in the first place.   The announced reason around how there would be key synergies between their auction business and Skype seemed rather far fetched - isn't the whole point of ebay to buy and sell something quickly and easily over the internet without needing to pick up the phone?

While there is still a lot of speculation around how the new owners will extract profit from the spectacularly popular service, there are a few aspects that could be interesting to explore further.

This opportunity would be a single integrated telephony suite that breaks down barriers between land lines, mobile telephones, fax machines, instant messaging, video conferencing and so on.   With people increasingly mobile, the concept of having all these separate numbers, and different charges depending on where they are physically located seems rather old fashioned.   All the user needs is a data service whereever he/she is and he/she is instantly connected.   The phone companies right now are trying to protect their monopoly - for example the decision made in the USA to block skype on the iphone through the AT&T network, but this can only last for so long.

The future is not that far away, if the phone company monopolies can be broken.  The question is if Skype will be the one to do it and reap the rewards.