Skype has made a deal with Verizon Wireless which will see the peer-to-peer Voice over IP service made available over Verizon’s 3G and WiFi networks for mobile devices.

The deal will allow free* Skype-to-Skype calling over the Verizon network.

As The Inquirer points out, major mobile telecom network providers have been reluctant to embrace VoIP communications due to the effective change in business model which it could herald. The deal which is to be offered to US Verizon Wireless customers is seen as being a big push to take marketshare from AT&T who are only providing Skype for their iPhone customers.

*free meaning the call itself between the Skype clients, obviously the network costs remain.

It is being reported here, there and everywhere that Orange & O2 are having a bit of a strop about Nokia’s integrating Skype with their new N97 smartphone handset.

It seems that the two operators are worried that the bundling of a voice-over-ip application with a smartphone would lose them voice-call revenue on their networks. The supposition being that users would opt for ‘cheap’ ‘unlimited’ data plans. From where I stand, ‘cheap’ ‘unlimited’ data plans are rather ‘invisible’ and I can’t really see voip being a lot cheaper in most cases except where the phone could be used with a non-network WiFi connection. Perhaps this is what actually worries O2 and Orange.

The cost of data plans also vary from country to country and both Orange and O2 are international operators so presumably there must be markets where their data plans are currently particularly cheap.

Naturally, if O2 and Orange choose to block the use of the N97 or it’s voice over ip abilities, they risk upsetting their customer base who may move to other operators such as T-Mobile who are said to be more ‘voip-friendly’.

Truphone who provide a SIP standard voice over IP calling system for mobile handsets of the Symbian S60 platform as well as some iPods and the iPhone have announced that they will now support Paypal payments for customers using iPods and iPhones.

While a number of debit and credit cards were already accepted, customers will now be able to use Paypal through their device to add land-line calling credit without the need to resort to using a web-browser equipped personal computer.

At the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced that it would be partnering with Skype to provide Voice over IP functionality on future handsets starting with the forthcoming Nokia N97 smartphone.

Rather than running Skype as a seperate application for Symbian, Nokia will be integrating Skype with the built-in address book to allow simple and direct calling/answering of Skype contacts.

The Nokia N97 handset provides both 3G and 802.11b/g WiFi connectivity so owners should be able to use Skype wherever they are.

Skype is a proprietary peer-to-peer VoIP protocol and as such can only communicate with other Skpe devices. There is no word yet as to whether the Nokia N97 or other future Nokia handsets will be supporting any open VoIP protocols such as SIP which would allow for greater interoperability.

Comcast say they have reached a collaborative agreement with Vonage which appears to suggest that while Comcast have their own VoIP offering, they wont be blocking or degrading Vonage’s rival product.

Quite where that leaves other SIP and proprietary VoIP users on Comcast’s network is anybody’s guess.

Comcast also say they haven’t been blocking any rivals VoIP in the past either but accusations have been levelled at them.

Connection quality is critical for Voice over IP applications as you need as much of the data as possible to arrive in a timely manner. ‘Packet loss’ in a VoIP conversation can manifest itself as a degradation of quality in the call followed by the call actually breaking up and finally being dropped altogether when too few packets arrive. Delaying of data at the ISP level can cause issues where the latency of the call makes normal conversation difficult.