Skype has collaborated with 3 Group which is owned by Hutchison Whampoa for offering its first VoIP service. With this 3 Group customers can now make free Skype calls to 3 Group Skype users and people using Skype through their computers worldwide. In order to use this service, customers would have to buy one of the monthly data plans of the company.

Niklas Zennstrom, chief executive officer of Skype stated:

It's now possible for the 136 million Skype users to break from their PCs and use Skype wherever they are.

Though the prices have not been revealed but the plan would certainly include unlimited usage. This service would be ideal for cell phone users making a number of international calls. The software is similar to one used on the computers and one could check for the people online on the phone and make calls to them. Mobile Skype users will be able to avail SkypeIn and SkypeOut services from the next year. First of all the service would be launched in UK in December and then later on would be available in other markets of 3 Group. As of now this service would only work with Nokia N73

Up till now we had seen that most of the mobile services were not comfortable with Skype and some of them had even blocked it as they felt that it could give a competition to the services offered by them. Will this new association create a new trend?