Skype Adds to VOIP Freefall

Skype has made calls from PCs to phones within Canada and the U.S. free for the remainder of the year. While the company will take a short term revenue hit, the promotion makes sense as a way to grow the user base so that Skype can pitch international calling and ad-supported services.

Free trials are effective methods of increasing membership, and once people have an account, it's a no-brainer to use Skype to call all over the globe at substantial savings. Skype probably isn't making that much money from calls within North America, so this is the cheapest free service that the company could offer.

It is a disturbing sign for Skype that the company makes just 9 cents per month per user, according to BusinessWeek.

It will be interesting to see how eBay leverages the millions of users for ad-supported services. With VOIP prices in freefall, interjecting ads is the only way companies will be able to stay in the black. Perhaps pre-call video ads before you are able to dial someone? The bigger fish may be some kind of user-to-user phone service for eBay bidders, or a legal file sharing network that integrates PayPal as the commerce engine. For digital content, eBay could enable users to sell to each other with extremely low overhead.