On 8 September 2005, Skype, which offers free high-quality phone calls via VoIP and instant messenger service to anyone with an Internet connection, launched their new Voice Service program for third party content provider.

Skype developed Voice Service Program in partnership with several industry leaders, such as Tellme Network, Voxeo, and Voxpilot. Any content provider may join this Skype’s new program to offer free or chargeable voice services to their customer. Skype callers will be charged through their Skype Credit account when they’re using chargeable voice services.

Several potential services that can be offered by content provider, are live traffic report, horoscope of the day, language learning tools, or international delivery tracking systems. Computer helpline, news service, and voice auctioning also possible. Hmmm, voice auctioning. Maybe this is the reason why eBay is going to buy Skype? Anyway, you can try the demo of Skype’s Voice Service here (you have to install Skype first).

According to Niklas Zennström, CEO and Co-founder of Skype, “Skype has driven a revolution in personal communications by popularizing free Internet phone calls. We are committed to opening the endless possibilities for voice by creating a marketplace for our thriving ecosystem of partners and developers to make it easy for their innovative services to be available to our millions of callers worldwide,“. He continued, “We challenge the world’s most creative content providers to work with us and our partners at Tellme, Voxeo and Voxpilot to develop these new and exciting forms of Internet voice services.”

Skype’s Voice Service Program makes use of the adoption of VoIP for transport and VoiceXML as the application language. Using that new VoIP technology, now anyone can create creative new services for the phone.

More detail about Skype’s Voice Service Program will be announced later later this month.

[ Via ShareSkype ]