Five Ways Skype & 3 Will Change UK's Mobile Market

3, the network owned by Hutchinson Whampoa, is making waves in the mobile market by shoving Skype, the popular Voice over IP service, down the throats of its competitors.

The announcement yesterday that anyone with a 99p Pay As You Go SIM card can access Skype on their phones forever without any charges, is bound to have a major impact on the mobile phone market, at least in the UK.

Here are five ways through which the duo are in the process of changing the UK mobile market.

(1) Pushing For Data

3 started as a 3G-only network and its latest venture with Skype brings it back to its roots. 3G is essentially a conduit for data rather than voice. 3 has not said how much it will be paying for the millions of Skype minutes that are made everyday over its networks but it is likely to be an opportunity cost rather than a real one. Its network, which it claims is the biggest in UK covering 99.5 percent of the population, is almost certainly under-utilised. Which is certainly why it can afford to offer 15GB worth of data transfer for £15 per month.

(2) Showing that VoIP actually works (for now) !

In yesterday's press release, which contained the Skype/3 announcement, 3 made it clear that Skype users aren't actually as bad as they are (ed: I like the analogy with MP3 freeloading pirates).