Founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype is the Global Internet Communications Company that makes it possible for anyone with an internet connection to make free high quality voice calls over the internet.

Skype has more than 54 million registered users worldwide, and the software has been downloaded 164 million times. There are 3 million simultaneous users on the network, and has ‘served’ more than 12 billion minutes of talk time.

Sandvine's analysis in August 2005 suggested that Skype now accounts for over 46% of all North American Internet telephony traffic.

Skype is the first peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet telephony software and the fastest growing communications software in history, growing more rapidly than Hotmail and ICQ.

Skype give its callers extensive, free features not available with traditional phones, including instant messaging, conference calling, file transfer and animated emoticons. The Skype software is available in 27 languages.

Skype’s pre-paid premium services offer affordable rates for contacting people not yet using Skype.

SkypeOut offers competitive international call rates to phones and mobiles – less than 2 cents per minute to many destinations. SkypeIn beta customers can obtain a personal SkypeIn phone number in their resident country, letting anyone, anywhere call the Skype client. Skype Voicemail lets people record and deliver voice messages to Skype callers. Skype Zones offers robust and inexpensive access to Skype over Wi-Fi for as little as $8.00 per month.

Skype has partnerships with... Cable & Wireless, COLT, B3G Telecom, iBasis, Level3, TDC Song and Teleglobe, which provide PSTN interconnections.

Skype is cross-compatible for a wide range of different computer platforms and devices including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Pocket PC.

Skype is a privately held company whose investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Index Ventures, and Mangrove Capital Partners.