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Comment by neonfunk | Hacker News Reader

From Skype's perspective, how is the cell network different from any other ISP? It's the carriers who will shoulder the burden; and there's no indication that any of the fee is going to them, given that Skype says "operator fees may still apply". I don't get it.

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It's many times more useful to use Skype on your mobile. If you're on 3G, it means you have no access to desktop Skype. And if it's more useful to you, they can charge for it.

The extra usability is a function of the carrier's network, not anything on Skype's end. And since many of us are already paying our carriers for data plans, why should Skype arbitrarily charge us a second time? I still don't get it.

It's pretty straightforward and not very "nice":

> why should Skype arbitrarily charge us a second time?

1) because they can; 2) who's going to stop them (definitely not carries who gain on that agreement)

No one's going to stop them from doing what's within the law; that's a given. I'm saying it strikes me as unethical, and it assumes a certain infancy in the public's tech acumen... which perhaps there is! But it still seems like a poor assumption to base a business on going forward.

Now I'm just hoping someone comes out with a iChat/AIM/Jabber/GTalk-like P2P standard for voice (does this already exist?).

Not sure about iChat and AIM, but GTalk already uses an XMPP-based protocol called Jingle. Theoretically you can use it between any 2 jabber clients which support it.

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