Brian McConnell had a really thorough writeup on some of the hype around Skype last week over at O'Reilly.

Voice over IP has been hyped as a breakthrough technology for at least ten years now. According to the hype, VoIP will make the telephone network obsolete, and that soon, every telephone call will be free. People were saying the same things ten years ago. This utopian world where every call is free is an alluring idea, but it will never happen. Here's why...

I have been working with computer telephony and VoIP technology since the early 1990s. It is interesting stuff, and it enables you to do things that were expensive or impractical with older circuit switched telephone systems. Unfortunately, many people outside of telecom have a fundamental misunderstanding that somehow the Internet and the telephone network are different things, that the Internet is the shiny new toy, and the telephone network is the decrepit old dinosaur.

Many of us who work in the VoIP community use Skype personally, but we also stay away from it for corporate use for a wide variety of reasons. Skype's clearly making overtures at penetrating the business market in some fashion. This article gives a good summary overview os some of the reality and some of the hype around Skype. Worth checking out if you either use Skype or are exploring how it might play into your business needs.