eBay Inc. Announces Plan for 2010 Initial Public Offering of Skype.

Absolutely going to happen if you believe in corporate spin doctors.

I am not so sure eBay is going to IPO their Skype offering. Even if Skype did around USD 551 million in revenue 2008 this is really no reason why an IPO is going to happen.

Before doing an IPO, eBay need to solve their licence issues with Joltid.

Second - Skype need to clearly define if they are a telephone operator or not. No one is arguing that Skype is the larget VoIP operator today. I doubt that none of the people in the VoIP business consider their Skype Out, and the half-hearted Skype In, to equalize them to a telecom operator. I will not even touch the subject of emergency services since this is a no-brainer outside certain countries in the northern hemisphere.

If they become a telco - they need to sort out the Skype Out, Skype In, emergency handling, etc. For anyone who have done a VoIP business from the ground up (yes - that includes creating dialplans for more than one country and doing emergency handling your self) - we do know that the issues at hand can be extremely complex.

So in my opinion, Skype will NOT become a telecom operator within the next 2 years. Maybe in 3-4 years time - but not in before the IPO.

On the other hand - I am not completely convinced there is not going to be an IPO.

So what are the reason why an IPO is a good thing? I.e. what must Skype do before the IPO takes place?

Some speculative forecasting

Let's play with the thought that the IPO is really going to happen in 2010.

With SIP for Skype (SfS) and Skype for Asterisk (SfA) happening right now we see that Skype is really gearing up to be a carrier for telephony. A carrier is not a telecom operator - thus the need for anything else than Skype Out is really not needed. This is putting is very bluntly. There are of course other thing a carrier does - but in principle it is terminating traffic. Skype Out is such a terminator.

Skype is earning money - no question about that. If we take a look at what they earn money on, my guess it that it is primarily traffic. SfA and SfS is even more traffic enablers.

Before the IPO is happening - SfA and SfS is going to be released - AND - people will rejoice and praise the company.

Zennström and Friis

Given the USD 551 millions in revenue for 2008, Skype could be a real cash cow. Even if the price is 2 billions - keeping Skype for more than 3 years and its all the money in the bank.

No wonder these guys wan their baby back.

With this in mind - paying customers, ready to buy ... strike that. Actually - paying customers which apparently own the underlying technology. And, according to various rumors, can switch of the Skype network if the see fit - eBay is better off selling to these guys than trying to do a IPO with all the current loose ends that the platform now have.