Are you on the other side of the world from your family, and tired of paying exorbitant fees for international calls? Skype is a cool new service providing the facility to make those calls - for free! In what's being called one of the largest shifts in consumer product use since the threat to the railroads by increased use of cars and airplanes, internet telephone systems are circumventing the network "tracks" provided by existing cable lines, and are connecting people in an aggressive and innovative way. It's no wonder that 240 million people have downloaded Skype over the last two years, and distances between people are disappearing as quickly as the Berlin Wall fell.

Skype utilizes a unique peer-to-peer network that allows people to talk over the internet, a model that's provided them with instant growth (at any time they have about 5 million active users online). Part of Skype's success can be accredited to two successful innovations. First, they provide people with the ability to communicate on the internet through firewalls, and second, rather than spending millions on hardware and other commodities, Skype harness its users' computers to do the work, connecting in a peer-to-peer fashion. In short, Skype delivers relief to those pesky phone bills by giving individuals and businesses a system that's easy to use. Depending on your connection, the voice quality can be amazing (this is constantly improving), and it's always secure. Skype is also realizing the direction that the communications business is headed, and is connecting their telephone services to other communication services such as instant messages. They even offer conferencing and video call facilities that provide major cost savings to businesses. Now anyone can integrate personal presence and instant messaging features into websites and applications like online gaming, e-commerce, communications and productivity tools; instantly building community and connections between people who can chat and alert others to their online availability. By opening up its platform to the web, Skype has created the largest open instant messaging platform in the world.

Although Skype's free services include only Skype-to-Skype calls, contacting traditional telephones through Skype is surprisingly cheap. Skype offers a low, by-minute rate to contact others which bests rivals such as AT&T and CallVantage by 56%, offering rates as cheap as .017 Euros per minute! They have completely disrupted telephone companies, whose international business is shrinking at broadband speeds. But the real power of Skype is in the way it makes it possible for people to easily communicate over long distances in a tangible experience. It looks like Skype will do for communication what Google did for information.