Skype Buy Shows eBay's Guts, Brains

Maybe eBay (EBAY Quote) is on to something with this Skype purchase after all. The more I think about it, the more I think eBay might have just snagged the most important telecom service provider since MCI back during the period it first challenged AT&T's (T Quote) monopoly.

And Google (GOOG Quote), Microsoft (MSFT Quote), Yahoo! (YHOO Quote) -- not to mention Verizon (VZ Quote), SBC (SBC Quote), and Deutsche Telecom (DT Quote) -- all have themselves a major new competitor.

Speaking of AT&T, the total purchase price that eBay just paid for Skype is almost 30% of what SBC recently paid for ... AT&T. Yes, Skype, a two-year old(!), tiny little software company that enables the transmission of voice packets over the Internet was just bought for up to $4.1 billion, depending on how well the deal works out in the next few years. Meanwhile, the oldest telecom company in the world, the company that invented voice transmission, that built the U.S. telecom networks that all packets today still touch at some point -- Ma Bell herself -- was just bought for $15 billion. What the heck is going on here? ...