Skype may finally be making some headway in the cell phone industry, as the company announced along with Verizon later on Friday a press conference scheduled for Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The two companies are expected to announce a deal that would put the Skype software on Verizon’s cellular phones.

Mobile carriers have generally pushed back in allowing Skype usage on their phones, fearing consumers would use the service to save money by negating the need for more minutes in their voice plans. Even AT&T up until the most recent SDK for the iPhone was giving the VoIP provider the cold shoulder. However, with consumers increasingly using their data side of their plans over the voice side, now may be the time to relax these restrictions in favor of generating more revenue.

The first carrier to allow Skype onto its phones was Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, whose 3 subsidiary began adding Skype in 2007. The addition of Skype has been said to have attracted “hundreds of thousands” of new customers to the service.

 
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