Hello Skype! I hope you enjoy your new home residing on the cutting edge of mobile platforms (yes I’m biased… I own one so what the heck).

A few months ago I heard rumors from inside Skype that they are definitly planning to release an iPhone app, at the time I was so excited and couldn’t wait for it to come out. but then once it started to gain traction and mobile companies felt threatened from VoIP services. it seemed like it was enevitable that any sort of service as such would be available. but then again… the customer is always right and eventually gets what they want, well atleast in one shape or form.

It makes strategic and logical sense to bar VoIP over 3G, EDGE, and GPRS networks… since if they had let it through howelse will companies like AT&T, vodafone, O2, and many more make money? I also heard that germany’s T-Mobile is preventing VoIP over their hotspot networks… now thats a real bummer.

But lets go back to a few months ago, I am a very mobile person, I move around and take my laptop almost everywhere I go. I’d go to cafe’s connect to their wireless networks and call away to friends all around the world. or even send SMS’s for cheaper rates to other countries, or even within egypt sometimes when I won’t have credit and need to send an urgent one. So yea, computers are getting smaller and smaller everyday. and people getting the kicks out of the All-in-one solutions are just exponential. it will happen eventually! why not think constructivly and instead of blocking these services, why not monitize it in some way or form? say for instance:

1. Subscription rates for VoIP services?
2. Mobile providers to negotiate on a shared revenue plan (I’ll give you access to my 3g network for a small piece of your cake!)
3. think outside of the box and I’m sure you’ll be able to think of much much more!!!

Enough ranting about this and let me tell you my personal opinion about Skype for the iPhone you’ll notice that I kinda added some of the things I think would’ve been great to have aswell to this list.

1. Amazing sound quality
2. Elegant interface
3. You can chat with friends over 3G and WiFi
4. Can’t make phone calls over 3G, only WiFi
5. Access to your addressbook to get those numbers that aren’t in your contact list.
6. Edit your profile
7. indication on how much Skype credit you got left
8. Can’t send SMS (boohoo) I want it BAAACK
9. Video chat? now that would be a feature!!

All in all, its one great step forward and the application is great, I was using Fring before just to be able to use skype on it, but the downside in that application was it was very laggy for me, echo’s and considerable delays in comms was really annoying and frequent. so yea its Skype from now on baby.