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Cisco Planning To Acquire Skype
rexjoec writes "Cisco is making a bid for Skype. The deal, if successful, would derail a planned initial public offering from Skype and redraw the battle lines in the lucrative market of video communications." The rumored price is $5B.
Is the company you work for that cheap that you have to share a desk and phone?
Or are you at home?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Cisco has a huge install base for business VoIP. Most of those businesses connect to land lines via traditional T-1 circuits. If Cisco integrated the Skype infrastructure with all those business customers, they could route calls over the Skype network bypassing the Telco's. From what I have seen, the average business long distance rate is 2-3 cents a minute. Cisco could charge 1 cent a minute and still make a fortune because they have such a large base of customers.
Now, what if they did the same for International calling?
I think it's going to move Skype away from Consumers and into the Business world where the real money is.
RTFG - Read The F#$%ing Google!
The problem is cash sitting around doing nothing. NPR was running a story yesterday talking about how the top 120 companies have over $1 trillion of cash sitting around, and investors are demanding they either distribute it to them via dividends or invest it via mergers and acquisitions. So, yeah, if it's either earning 0.5 percent in a money market account or buying up a ton of relatively cheap companies with the potential for a much larger return, you go on a spending spree and buy up whatever you think is going to have a decent ROI.