Skype 3G: 5 Million and Counting

The Skype for 3G application has been downloaded 5 million times since it was released earlier this week, placing it among the hottest mobile applications ever. The accomplishment was all the more remarkable considering that marketing around the new app, which enables iPhone users to make Skype calls over their 3G connection, from AT&T, rather than Wi-Fi networks only, has been minimal.

Watershed, Rubicon, tipping point: pick your metaphor, but it’s clear that the last few weeks have marked a significant acceleration in the spread of mobile VoIP, largely because wireless carriers have given up trying to slow the flood with their thimbles. As I pointed out yesterday, the driver behind AT&T’s shift to tiered pricing is less an attempt to relieve congestion on its network than an acknowledgment that mobile data, including mobile VoIP, is the future, and the carriers must grab their slice of the resulting revenue stream while they can.

The first big crack in the dam came back in February, at Mobile World Congress, when Verizon and Skype hooked up to offer Skype Mobile over Verizon’s cellular network. That deal “marks a turning point for the mobile and wireless industry – a before-and-after moment that at a stroke renders obsolete the conventional minutes-based business model of incumbent carriers not only in the U.S. but around the world,” I wrote at the time.

“We’ve seen a real change in the attitude of operators around the world” in regard to allowing (or, in this case, supporting) VoIP services on their networks, Skype CEO Josh Silverman said at the press conference in Barcelona, at Mobile World Congress. Skype’s partnerships with wireless carriers like 3, in the U.K., “have demonstrated that they make more money when they work with Skype.”

Consider some of the other recent developments: Telefonica acquired mobile VoIP provider Jajah, for $207 million, a bargain-basement price for immediate integrated VoIP service over Telefonica’s network. International pre-paid mobile VoIP provider Vopium said it will offer its overseas mobile VoIP service as a white-label feature for carriers and other service providers. Based in Copenhagen, the company said it expects to announce its first operator partner shortly. AT&T relented and said it would allow Skype to work over its 3G network, a precursor to the iPhone 3G Skype app.

Research firms have caught wind of the inevitable, as well: Juniper Research expects the total number of mobile VoIP users to exceed 100 million by 2012, a number dwarfed by InStat’s prediction of 288 million mobile VoIP subscribers by 2013. Morgan Stanley said mobile VoIP traffic will more than double every year at least through 2014. The spread of LTE – a pure data networking technology that doesn’t even include a dedicated system for transmitting voice – will only hasten that growth.

Wired.com’s Eliot Van Buskirk wrote a good explainer last month, entitled “5 Reasons Cellphones and Mobile VoIP Are Forging an Unlikely Truce.”

“No matter how you slice it, mobile VoIP is a battle that’s not worth fighting for the carriers,” Van Buskirk commented, “and is actually a development well worth encouraging.” (The piece also includes a handy chart comparing mobile VoIP providers.)

This is not a development – it’s a tsunami. Ride it or get destroyed.