Less than a week after its long overdue update allowing VoIP calls over the iPhone’s 3G connection, nearly five million people have already downloaded the latest update to the popular Skype App from iTunes.
Of course, that’s five million people who are going to go absolutely bonkers when Skype starts inexplicably charging for 3G calls at the beginning of next year.
According to Skype, they are charging to make sure they can maintain quality on Skype-to-Skype calls, but I can’t help but wonder if the long delay in bringing 3G calls to Skype was a roadblock placed by AT&T, who — rightly — see a 3G capable Skype as a threat ti their minutes business… especially once iPhone OS 4.0 comes around and enables VoIP multi-trasking.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
