Silverman came armed with data from its 3 UK experience—Skype signed a deal with the UK carrier to introduce a Skype phone that comes with a huge Skype button in the middle of the phone—to show that Skype could actually benefit carriers rather than “cannibalize” their revenues. He said 79 percent of those who bought a Skype phone were new customers to the UK carrier; 75 percent of those who bought one saw the application as the main reason they stayed with the network; and, more importantly, average revenue per use (ARPU) among Skype phone users was 20 percent more than the network’s average customer.

But Sol Trujillo, CEO of Australian carrier Telstra, was unconvinced. When asked if Telstra would be adding Skype as a service, Trujillo said: “It probably worked well for the carrier involved, but I have a responsibility to make money.” Trujillo said that Telstra already offered Skype-type services such as video calling that “have some of the highest ARPU in the world, and some of the highest growth in the world,” adding: “and we make money.” Meanwhile, judging from the laughter and then loud applause that Trujillo got for his remark about his responsibility to make money, Skype’s not convincing many others about their equal importance in the eco-system either.

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Photo Credit: Icherche