Kazaa co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have a new target: the telephone industry.
They"ve launched Skype, which they claim is the first Internet phone service to use peer-to-peer software. In just its first week of availability, 60,000 people downloaded the free Skype software. Other voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, such as Vonage or Free World Dialup (FWD), needed several months to attract the same level of interest.
Just as they shook up the music industry by creating Kazaa, the pair now wants to rattle the cages of traditional telephone companies. In an interview with CNET News.com, Friis discussed the coming challenges for VoIP, what Skype actually means (nothing, as it turns out) and a possible regulatory backlash against VoIP providers, among other issues.