Vodafone is planning on launching Internet-calling for cell phones with Skype (owned by eBay inc.). Vodafone showoff the application (Code-named Starfish) in the future zone of its booth at technology trade show, CeBIT. It is unknown exactly when the new service will be launched.According to Jan Holzberg, the manager for the product at Vodafone Group, "We have not yet decided if we will launch it, or the commercial terms and prices." Starfish allows a cellphone user to see a list of buddies from various chat and Internet calling groups, such as MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Skype, and send messages and make Internet calls.

The calls only use the traditional wireless voice channel from the phone to the radio base station and the rest is carried over the Internet, even if the call goes halfway around the world, as opposed to normal voice calls, which are routed over the traditional voice telephony network. The Starfish software on the cell phone is essentially the same Skype software which is used by Vodafone's much smaller rival "3," owned by Hutchison Whampoa, which it launched last year in an attempt to find new customers to boost network traffic. Starfish is a sign that Vodafone, the world's top mobile operator outside China, and Skype, the world's largest Internet communication company, with nearly 200 million registered users, are finally coming together.