Skype resolved a major sales hurdle for customers living outside Europe when it officially launched PayPal today as a payment option. This means people who buy premium based services such as SkypeIn and SkypeOut at skype.com can use PayPal to pay using a credit card, bank account or stored balance. While I was once a Skype skeptic, this company continues to impress me with their ability to convince a large user base nurtured on free service to buy fee-based services. Of course, the one thing I would like to see Skype spell out is the buying patterns of its 1.4 million premium service users. It's one thing if these people make one purchase a year, it's quite another if 250K are buying a weekly or monthly basis. Much like Vonage, Skype likes to throw big numbers around - 39 million registered users, for example - but it is impossible to really get a handle on how well either company is doing without seeing some basic balance sheet figures - revenue, cash flow, EBITDA, profits, etc.

In another attempt to force VOIP into the mainstream conciousness, Cisco will arm Indy 500 drivers Eddie Cheever and Patrick Carpentier with technology to communicate with their engineers and pit crews during the upcoming race. The technology, which includes Cisco service access points, routers and wireless IP phones, will provide pit crews and both drivers with real-time information and statistics during the race. "Cisco is changing the way our team communicates and analyzes data," said Cheever gushes in a press release. Given Cisco credit for trying to generate some excitement around VOIP. Speaking of buzz, Cisco's back in the news again with the $70 million acquisition of FineGround Networks, which makes technology that accelerate Web-based application performance over IP networks. I wonder when my friends at Nortel are going to get on the technology acquisition bandwagon?

After two years heading up Nortel's P.R. department, Marion Mackenzie is moving on to greener and, hopefully, calmer pastures. It has to be one of the most demanding and thankless corporate P.R. jobs given Nortel's accounting woes, senior management changes and business challenges. If anything, doing "time" at Nortel is a great way to pick up tremendous crisis P.R. skills, which can only be a good thing for the next assignment. Let's hope Ms. Mackenzie has given her successor, Bill Durling (who surprise, surprise is not a Canadian) some going away pointers on proper media relations - i.e. do not issue press releases at 8 p.m. on Fridays. Anyway, good luck Marion. Enjoy your much-deserved time off!

I've got a column in today's National Post about how efforts by Canadian wireless carriers to jump-start Wi-Fi are flawed because the business model - if there ever was one - is slowly disappearing. My thesis is there just aren't enough people willing to pay a premium price for the convenience of surfing the Web and checking e-mail at a coffee shop or restaurant. With free Wi-Fi hot spots, Blackberries, Treos and cheap Internet cafes, you can easily get an Internet/e-mail fix without paying $9.95 an hour or $20 a day for Wi-Fi access. Given this little rant, I found it intriguing to stumble across a story on Engadget about a cafe in Seattle that has turned off its free Wi-Fi service on the weekends because 90% of its seats who taken by people spending hours surfing the Internet. Although it has only been a couple weeks, revenue is apparently up and staff are happier. In another Luddite trend, there are a number of stores in Montreal - particularly bakeries for some reason - that have started to ban cell phone usage. It seems the proprietors were getting pissed off with loud wireless conversations and distracted customers. Now if they can institute laws banning cell phone usage in automobiles, that would be a huge step in the right direction.