"SKYPE CREEPS UNDER PHONE GIANTS' RADAR"

More from News.com. Amazing that Skype's viral marketing as hit over 56 million downloads. About a year ago when I first downloaded Skype, it was at 7 million. Since I got my new laptop a few months ago, I never bought a microphone for it and haven't signed on. My login in "moocowhog" so if you want add my to your list and hopefully in a week I'll be back on.

At a time when major U.S. telephone operators are spending billions of dollars to expand, telephone software maker Skype on Tuesday says it's building a global phone network virtually for free.

New renditions of Skype software for Linux and Macintosh operating systems are expected to become available on Tuesday. The new releases are a significant expansion for 17-month-old Skype. Since its debut, Skype's free software only worked on Microsoft devices, though test versions of the Linux and Macintosh software have been available since last year.

Skype's latest software arrives at a time when many elite U.S. phone companies are consolidating with others in multibillion dollar deals that let the communications giants expand into new markets and territories. Using the merger-mania as a backdrop, Skype's new software releases should put even more fright into traditional telecom executives.

The number of new Skype users is increasing at rates not seen since the early days of instant messaging, and at no cost to Skype other than hosting a Web site to make the software available, and "making software tweaks," Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom said in a recent interview. More than 140,000 new users register each day.