Skype readies business telephone offering

Skype plans to offer a business telephone service for "individuals and workgroups, not CIOs" that the free Internet phone service provider believes will shake-up another major telephone market. Winning over business will not be an easy task, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom said Wednesday. Incumbent suppliers of business phone services and equipment fiercely protect customers, who in turn are extremely loyal. Also, why would a business trust its phone network to a start-up such as Skype, which uses new peer-to-peer Net phone technology, has just 60 employees and very nascent sales channels?

This will be the biggest test yet for Skype, which after just a year in business has become a big hit with consumers. It's trying to cash in on the fact that 22 million consumers downloaded the free Skype software since it first became available, and then made nearly 1.8 billion minutes of calls that would have normally been done across traditional phones.

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