This month’s announcement that eBay is to buy Skype for £2.23bn has received a mixed response from industry experts.

‘This is all about convergence. Skype has had significant growth but it will not account for much until it can broaden its service. eBay gives it the potential to do that,’ says Rob Bamforth, practice lead at analyst Quocirca.

‘It’s a fascinating combination. Voice over IP (VoIP) is not that interesting as a replacement for ordinary telephone systems, but combined with eBay there is huge potential.’

Ron Cowles, vice president of research at Gartner, says the disruptive aspect of VoIP is now being recognised.

‘VoIP is really disruptive because it is fundamentally not a geographically based service,’ he says. ‘VoIP providers are changing the marketplace, but they cannot sustain the growth on their own because they do not have the customers.’

Meg Whitman, chief executive at eBay, says that integrating Skype’s voice calling technology into eBay’s markets would make it easier for traders to communicate, thus lowering friction in online transactions and increasing the overall value of services.

eBay Will also generate revenue by charging sellers that use Skype to call potential buyers.

eBay’s acquisition of Skype comes as several technology companies are declaring a public interest in internet telephony.

Microsoft has announced the purchase of privately held Teleo, a developer of VoIP technology similar to that used by Skype. It plans to integrate the technology into its Messenger instant messaging application and other MSN services.

Google has launched its Google Talk instant messenger client (see page 22 of Data Business), offering basic VoIP calling between users of the Talk software, while Yahoo and BT have collaborated on a broadband VoIP service.