Monday, February 06, 2006

FON + Skype + Netgear = Trouble for BigTelco

Skype announced that it invests in FON, the P2P WiFi company I blogged about earlier. Add to this new PC-less Skype phones from Netgear, Creative and others (see a posting of Christian Leybold from BV Capital) and you have the ingredients for some major trouble for the traditional telco business.

Of course, this is not new. Skype alone is an incredibly disruptive force. But the flood of new products and services centered around Skype shows just how strong the creative destruction is which Skype has triggered. I'm not saying that the big telcos are doomed. But they must find new cash cows - selling long-distance minutes at high prices will become increasingly difficult.

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