Skype moves to mobile

Skype, the Internet calling service that has more than 400 million users around the world, is aggressively moving onto mobile phones, reports The New York Times.

The Luxembourg-based company, a division of eBay, plans to announce that it will make its free software available immediately for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch and, beginning in May, for various BlackBerry phones, made by Research in Motion

Other companies have already made software for those phones that works with Skype, but it does not offer all of the service's features.

Dutch electronics maker TomTom NV boasts a personal navigation device, the $400 Go 740 Live, that uses a cellular link for everything from traffic reports to Google searches, writes The Statesman.

TomTom follows in the footsteps of Dash Navigation and its Dash Express device, which had a built-in cellular data modem to download real-time traffic updates and run Yahoo Internet searches from a car. But the $400 Dash Express flopped with consumers and is no longer on the market.

The new Go 740 Live doesn't care what brand of cell phone you own. The device packs its own cellular data modem, just like the Dash Express. A user gets three months of service for free and after that it costs $9.95 a month.

T-Mobile USA is opening up its new cellular broadband network to laptops for the first time, with this week's launch of a USB "dongle" that lets portable computers get wireless Internet access, says LubbockOnline.

The plug-in device costs $50 with a two-year contract, or $100 if the buyer is signing up for one year. From then, service costs $60 per month for up to 5GB of traffic.

The prices are similar to those at the three larger cellular carriers. T-Mobile is playing catch-up to Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel when it comes to building out a nationwide third-generation, or 3G, data network.