Skype deal alters VoIP landscape

BOSTON — What a difference a year and $2.6 billion makes.

The renegade cool that once surrounded Skype Technologies SA at past gatherings of the Internet telephone industry has been replaced by mockery and awe at this week’s VON show.

Nearly every speech or conversation at the conference that opened Tuesday has turned at least briefly to last week’s news that Skype, a free computer-to-computer phone service, is being acquired by Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. for an unfathomable sum in this upstart business. The $2.6 billion tag could reach $4.1 billion depending on Skype’s performance.

Some of the chatter has been dismissive and critical of Skype and its “peer-to-peer” technology. But the Skype deal and smaller acquisitions by Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. also are sparking optimism that the industry is now pushing into the consumer and corporate mainstream after a decade of promises.

“Skype has done the community at large a favor,” said Mark Spencer, a mini-rock star in that community who created a free “open source” platform for office phone systems based on Internet Protocol technology. The Linux-based platform, named Asterisk, has been downloaded by developers more than a quarter million times this year.

“Skype demonstrates a very important principle that people want something that works,” said Spencer, whose company, Digium Inc., announced a deal with Intel Corp. to create software drivers for Intel hardware to work with Asterisk systems.

One Asterisk programmer at the show used the platform to create a service to connect people displaced by Hurricane Katrina with friends and family. The service, called Contact Loved Ones, lets evacuees punch in a home number where they’re no longer located and record a message. Acquaintances who dial in and enter the number will be played that message and can leave their own.