January 22, 2008... Skype keeps trying to do mobile telephony. It (Skype-to-Go) won't work this time either.

"What do you think? "Skype to Go" looks like a pretty bad deal to me. I'm not a big international caller and I don't think international calling is a mass-market attraction. So this new feature, while satisfying the same niche as other hacked implementations for mobile, fails to address the larger issue of putting real Skype services on a mobile phone.

And then there are the fees. To use Skype-to-Go, I need "SkypePro" which I thought was a fixed-price bundle of services, but then Skype wants to nickel and dime me for Skype-to-Go, first with "connection fees" and then with fees for minutes even when I'm calling within my own country where SkypePro is supposed to give me unlimited Skypeout. If I wanted this new feature (which I really don't but that's personal), I would prefer a fixed price.

From the reaction coming from some people, "Skype-to-Go" looks like it will be a success, and yet to me it looks like just another half-baked program with short-term objectives. I'm anxiously awaiting the availability of 4G mobile phones (with WIMAX) so that I can run Skype with all its features (encryption, IM, video, SMS, etc.) rather than running a voice-only Skype through a PSTN gateway that strips it of its uniqueness. It's not easy to get excited about Skype-to-Go.

For me, "My-to-Go" is a more attractive program . Developed by the well known "UberOverLord" and sold as a Skype Extra for Windows users only (sadly), it does the same things as "Skype-to-Go", and more... with the only caveat being that you need to have Skype running on a separate machine at home while you're out on the road with your mobile phone. My-to-Go doesn't actually put Skype on a mobile phone, but at least it addresses some of the fee issues.

One thing is for sure, when Skype is deployed effectively in mobile environments, it will have a huge impact on "real users" as I count them. These mobile users will have a Skype "presence" perhaps around the clock.... which is perhaps 3x the average hours online per user today. Also note that as of November 2007, there were some 3.3 Billion (that's right... Billion) cell phones worldwide. It's a far larger market that any of the social networks or even than "enterprise telephony".