The Week In VoIP - Skype, Ebay, Nortel, Asterisk - Aug 28, 2009

Updated: January 07, 2011

Someone Is Going To Shake Skype Loose From Ebay

Skype is far-and-away the leading personal PC-based VoIP provider globally. Recent pushed by Google with Google Voice and many other services similar to Skype have made barely a dent. The current numbers suggest that as many as 450 million people have been registered Skype users and the company expects over $600 million in revenues. But the original founders of Skype are suing Skype/Ebay to do with the underlying peer-to-peer technology that powers Skype. One suggestion is that they would like to take Skype back from Ebay and develop it further. The other rumor is that Marc Andressen's new venture capital firm is interested in buying Skype from Ebay. However, the reported asking price is $2 billion (or about $5 for every person who has ever tried Skype).

Nortel Facing Even More Bad News - The IRS wants $3 Billion

Nortel is facing a storm of bad news. It is already unloading its wireless unit to Ericsson and is rumored to be going to do the same with its VoIP division to Sonus. The proposed sale of its Enterprise division to Avaya may be blocked by the DOJ. It also apparently faces $300 million in bankruptcy-related fees, and some other bad news. The IRS has submitted a claim for $3 billion against just the US division of Nortel. Since Nortel's estimated debt is $11 billion, and it seems unable to raise more than about a third of that from sale of all assets, the IRS claim is at best insult to injury, but still...how the mighty have fallen.

Asterisk Open Source PBX To Add Skype Support

Digium, makers of the open source PBX platform, Asterisk, have announced that the beta test period for Skype for Asterisk is at an end. You can now get a single channel version of the software from the Digium Asterisk Store. basically it adds Skype support to any Asterisk server so that it can make Skype to Skype calls, receive calls from Skype and integrates Skype calling into Asterisk.

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