droidStory

Verizon officially launched Skype for most of their Smartphones today, including all of their current Android handsets – the Motorola Droid, HTC Eris and Motorola Devour.

This is a very important move for Big Red, basically acknowledging that the future of mobile networks is in providing high-speed IP connectivity for all network applications, even the ones that compete with the providers traditional voice business.  Verizon is finally getting with the times by abandoning some of their past customer unfriendly business practices.  Blackberry users may still remember when their GPS capable phones had their hardware disabled by Verizon, rendering Google Maps useless, unless you paid an extra $12/month for VZ-Navigator. Of course there were also all the other bogus surcharges for tethering and BES Enterprise use.

The arrival of the Droid and now Skype seem to usher in a new era for Verizon. Let’s hope the bureaucrats at the company are not trying to turn back the clock for the sake of the bottom line.

UPDATE: Skype doesn’t work on Wi-Fi! Come again!?
Not sure if this is Verizon meddling with phone/application functionality again, but why?