Sooner or later it had to happen: Skype as the topic of a major consultancy's publication (pure egoistic self-promotion: I believe to have been there first, admittingly though not in our inhouse publication). Booz Allen Hamilton's "strategy + business" is writing about Skype's Challenge (pdf). James is mentioned in the article (and funnily enough also myself in an indirect way), and his blog was actually my source.
The article doesn't really say anything new, but it has its point: Only two months ago, I talked to a rather highly-ranked manager of a major European mobile phone operator, and at that time he hadn't heard about Skype, and neither did any of his subordinates. While this is anectodal evidence, I am pretty sure that also many of his peers at other operators don't know what is going to hit them soon. So Skype might actually be going mainstream very soon if the consultants start using it as their burning platform. T-Mobile has already dropped its walled garden approach and is setting its preset home page for its phones to Google, so who knows what's next for Skype - a partnership deal with one of the major CellCos?
By the way, the manager is now enthusiastically using Skype himself and promoting it among his friends.
UPDATE: James has more details on the T-Mobile announcement, he explicitly asked T-Mobile CEO René Obermann about the impact of mobile VoIP.
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