Friday, October 21, 2005

eBay chief sees free VoIP calls

1. eBay chief sees free VoIP calls


Meg Whitman, eBay's CEO, predicts that within just a few years consumers will be able to make phone calls with no per-minute charges thanks to new provider pricing models that are based on transaction fees or advertising. Speaking during the company's quarterly conference call, Whitman defended the online auctioneer's recent acquisition of Skype. She observed that Skype's explosive success would eventually drive phone call costs to zero. "The percentage of users that you can actually charge for (phone services) will actually go down... we understood that when we looked at Skype," Whitman stated in response to an analyst's question. "In the end, the price that anyone can provide for voice transmission on the 'Net will trend toward zero."

[FierceWireless]

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