Skype, the pioneering Global Internet Communications Company, which offers free high-quality phone calls to anyone with an Internet connection, announced the further development of its strategy, creating business opportunities for its thriving community of developers and partners by launching its Voice Services Program for third party content providers.

The Skype Voice Services Program developed in partnership with industry leaders like Tellme Networks enables any content provider, large or small, to become a part of Skype's new marketplace for either free or chargeable voice services. Content providers will join Skype's ecosystem of more than 400 Skype developers worldwide who are already offering hardware and software products to Skype's 53 million members.



"Skype has driven a revolution in personal communications by popularizing free Internet phone calls. We are committed to opening the endless possibilities for voice by creating a marketplace for our thriving ecosystem of partners and developers to make it easy for their innovative services to be available to our millions of callers worldwide," said Niklas Zennstrom, CEO and Co-founder of Skype. "We challenge the world's most creative content providers to work with us and our partners at Tellme, Voxeo and Voxpilot to develop these new and exciting forms of Internet voice services."

Examples of voice services Skype callers could benefit from include live traffic reports, horoscope of the day, language learning tools, or international delivery tracking systems, available for free or for a charge to the caller.

Tellme Networks, the company bringing Internet services to the telephone, is a key partner for Skype's new program alongside Voxpilot and Voxeo. These partners will work with Skype to provide market-leading platforms and development resources with which content providers can build and charge for innovative voice services.

"Internet standards are opening the traditionally closed phone network. With the adoption of VoIP for transport and VoiceXML as the application language, now anyone, anywhere can build creative new services for the phone," said Mike McCue, Tellme CEO and Co-founder. "By partnering with Skype, we believe this community will begin to set the standard for the way people build, buy and deliver phone services globally."

Skype callers will pay for chargeable voice services from their Skype Credit account with a percentage of the fee going to the content provider who created the service. Content providers' voice services will be reviewed and the most popular will be deployed and listed on the Skype website. Details about how to submit applications and the fee structure will be announced later this month.

Interested content providers can access more information on Skype's Voice Services Program at http://www.skype.com/partners/voice/ where they will also find links to its partner platforms: Tellme Studio http://studio.tellme.com; www.voxbuilder.com and www.voxeo.com to build and submit applications for deployment on Skype.