Rich was quoted in the Economist (premium content) regarding the Skype/eBay deal. Here's an excerpt of the article since it requires a subscription: (Update, found the entire article here)
That is because Skype can add 150,000 users a day (its current rate) without spending anything on new equipment (users “bring” their own computers and internet connections) or marketing (users invite each other). With no marginal cost, Skype can thus afford to maximise the number of its users, knowing that if only some of them start buying its fee-based services—such as SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voicemail—Skype will make money. This adds up to a very unusual business plan.
“We want to make as little money as possible per user,” says Mr Zennstrom, because “we don't have any cost per user, but we want a lot of them.” This is the exact opposite of the traditional business model in the telecoms industry, which is based on maximising the average revenue per user, or ARPU. And that has only one logical consequence.
According to Rich Tehrani, the founder of Internet Telephony, a magazine devoted to the subject, Skype and services like it are leading inexorably to a future in which all voice communication, near or far, will be free.
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