eBay's Skype Offering Free Outgoing Calls -- Threat to Vonage, AOL's AIMphone? (EBAY, VG, TWX)

eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) -owned Skype announced today that it will let its users, in US and Canada, call any phone for free (including regular landline/cellular phones) until the rest of this year. Skype is still not a household name in the US as it is in the rest of the world, including its home market of Europe. The service was previously offered through the feature SkypeOut, enabling people to call any regular phone.

I tried the free Skype out service myself today and found it very easy to use. You just download Skype and start making calls. The service would be good for people who have PDA’s and a Skype client enabling them to make free calls wherever there is wireless internet available. It would be interesting to see how people react to free Skype. eBay has already sent out the email about this to its registered users.

I think this is a good move by eBay to market Skype in US and Canada. With traditional internet portals like Yahoo, MSN, Google and AOL getting into the VOIP business, it's important for Skype to maintain leadership in this sector. By allowing SkypeOut for free, Skype will be able to sell other services such as SkypeIn which lets users pick a telephone number to receive calls.

It would be interesting to see how Vonage (which is supposed to IPO soon under ticker 'VG') and traditional phone companies react to this. I am also waiting to see the reaction from AOL, Yahoo and Google. Hopefully, we don’t see internet providers like AT&T and Comcast blocking VOIP calls.

Full disclosure: Author is long EBAY