Hop 255

Future of Skype and possible sale

Reflections on the future of Skype at the Search Engine Journal which give some indication of why buyers might be circling. Meanwhile speculation has surfaced that Skype nearly sold for $3 Billion to News Corporation in the last week or so. It is reported in several places but the source appears to be Robert Cringley.  With the decline in newspaper readership Murdoch is known to want to expand into new media. That being said News Corp. had their fingers burnt with OneTel a new entrant telecommunications company in Australia that went bust. On the other hand through good luck or foresight News dodged the purchase of Pointcast and people are still trying to figure out how to make money out of RSS.

Cable Broadband

Developments like these raise questions about the future of fibre to the home -- or at least any imperative in that direction. With DSL hitting the same highs in the Lab what are the applications that demand fibre?

WGIG report

Final WGIG report is online here. Meanwhile USG has posted its own guiding principles here.

Ghana Powerline Trial

Demonstration of the use of powerlines to provide broadband service in Ghana written up here.

Skype Video

Skype testing video telephony.

VoIP Subscriber Numbers

New VoIP subscriber numbers from Point Topic with an estimate for Skype users. Probably better for them to use SkypeOut subscribers rather than guess at Skype "free only" users.

Nabaztag

Launch of Nabaztag written up here.

Skype and The Cloud

Skype deal with The Cloud to give users wireless access at 6000 hotspots in UK.

Skype blocking on mobiles 2

More on VoIP blocking by mobile telcos.

Ofcom Market Update

Ofcom's latet market update reported by FT.