Earlier this month, GoRemote announced a strategic partnership with Skype whereby GoRemote's customer base of mobile workers and teleworkers will get free Skype phone calls using GoRemote's secure mobile broadband solutions. The arrangement is similar to a partnership Skype and Fiberlink announced earlier this year. 

In a statement issued by both companies, James Bilefield, vice president of business development at Skype said: "GoRemote's secure mobile broadband access with Skype calling is a winning combination for mobile workers. Mobile workers can save money by using Skype to make free phone calls in the knowledge that the calls are end-to-end encrypted for superior privacy."

In the same joint statement, Tom Thimot, president and CEO of GoRemote commented: "By combining GoRemote's global virtual business network solutions with Skype voice services, we are enabling business professionals to be more productive without compromising the security of their networks."

To provide the service, GoRemote will bundle Skype's telephony software with the GoRemote Mobile Office client software, offering Skype as a value-added service. The bundle gives GoRemote's customers "additional security between communicating hosts and simplified access to the Skype software." The Mobile Office client provides access to an extensive virtual business network that includes more than 30,000 wireless broadband access points in 70 countries.

While the joint offering does provide an added layer of security to free-of-charge Skype calls over the Internet, we remain unconvinced that businesses will rely solely on voice over the Internet unless QoS is also included - although we should note that Steve and Larry both use Skype and have found that Skype's voice quality is usually (but not always) as good or better than the PSTN.  

And for those keeping track of Steve and Larry's predictions about free voice, it looks like another commercial endorsement of our long-held contention that voice will become "just another feature" that gets bundled in with broadband access.  

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.