Boston.com / Business / Technology / Free calls? So what's not to like?

Boston.com / Business / Technology / Free calls? So what's not to like?: "'If I were running an incumbent carrier, I don't think I would be terribly concerned about Skype at the moment, but I'd have it on my radar screen,' said Nancy Kaplan, a vice president with Adventis, a Boston telecom consulting firm. 'Having it be strictly computer-to-computer is somewhat limiting, but I think anybody who has to make a significant amount of international calls will find this interesting.'
Even if Skype is not a silver bullet aimed at the heart of conventional phone companies, Kaplan and other analysts expect it can be one more factor accelerating the erosion of their business. Skype could make deep inroads in certain now-lucrative markets, such as college students who make long phone calls or people who call family and friends overseas."

SAD: The title sums it about here. It's true that the short-term threat is for long distance services, but it's too easy to see the long-term threat against the Bell companies and cable companies (who want to extract dollars above the IP packet traffic). The quality, which I'll continue to crow about, is simply amazing - with only brief annoyances that, when you're paying nothing, are very easy to deal with.