Skype to get independence ?

The Skype Group, founded by Swedish-born entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and the Dane Janus Friis, has its headquarters in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague, and San Jose, California.

Now that eBay has vaulted a major hurdle in its efforts to sell Skype, the Web telephony service must prove it can make it on its own.

Since its founding six years ago, Skype has built up a roster of more than 520 million registered customers who use the free Web service for voice, video or text communication. In just the last quarter, it added 40 million users.

Still, Skype is facing some challenges. One problem is growing competition from other high-profile services, including Google Inc's Google Voice.

What Skype needs to significantly expand in mobile, is approval from telecommunications network operators to integrate its service more tightly with the cellphone's main voice dialing feature.

After eBay announced a plan to sell 65 percent of Skype for $1.9 billion in September, Skype's founders threw a wrench into the works by suing eBay and a group private investors that planned to buy into the service. The dispute related to technology licensing.

Under the settlement, the founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, will contribute software and a capital investment in exchange for a 14 percent stake in Skype. Investors Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board will hold 56 percent of Skype and eBay will retain the rest. The deal values Skype at $2.75 billion.