With the closing of the deal, which was announced back in May, Skype will become a new business unit within Microsoft, with Skype CEO Tony Bates becoming the president of the newly created Skype division. Over time, Microsoft said, it will integrate Skype into a variety of its products.

“By bringing together the best of Microsoft and the best of Skype, we are committed to empowering consumers and businesses around the globe to connect in new ways,” Bates said in a statement. “Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype’s goal to reach 1 billion users daily.”

It’s the latest big acquisition for Skype, which was first acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion back in 2005. The online auction company sold off most of the company to private equity owners for $1.9 billion in 2009. Then, in May, Microsoft came along with its bid, nabbing Skype before a planned IPO.

Although the deal has received required regulatory approval in most markets, Microsoft noted that the deal has not yet been approved in certain markets.

“The acquisition remains under review in a few countries, and will be completed in those countries when such reviews are closed,” Microsoft said.

Of course, the big question now is what Microsoft is able to do with its big buy.

T-Mobile notes that 20 percent of calling is currently done using IP telephony; that figure is expected to reach 40 percent over the next three years.

“We want to embrace the opportunity to get our fair share of that market,” T-Mobile Senior VP Brad Duea told AllThingsD. It doesn’t hurt that T-Mobile has the smallest share among major U.S. cellular carriers, or that it doesn’t have its own landline phone business, as do Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. “We don’t have a legacy landline business to protect,” Duea said.

T-Mobile launched the Bobsled service earlier this year, initially focused on calling between Facebook friends. The company had a little trouble getting off the ground, as Facebook took issue with the way T-Mobile was marketing it. It was eventually relaunched in May.

With the latest expansion, the service now allows calling via mobile devices as well as through Mac and PC Web browsers. Calls are free not only to other PCs but also from any device to any phone number in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, Duea said. T-Mobile also has a group and text messaging component to Bobsled, which is currently available on three T-Mobile Android devices, and is coming soon to any Android or iOS device.

“With IP (telephony), we can extend our reach beyond our market, literally into other countries,” Duea said. T-Mobile isn’t the only carrier that sees such calling services — dubbed “over-the-top” services — as a way to expand their markets to new geographies. France Telecom’s Orange, for example, has an app called ON Voicefeed that aims to get into VoIP calling by providing a custom voicemail service.

T-Mobile is particularly interested in offering calling to young iPod touch owners, who might then be interested in T-mobile service when they get their first phone. (Of course, T-Mobile also hopes to be acquired by AT&T before that happens.) The company plans to eventually issue Bobsled customers their own phone numbers, so they can receive calls from any phone.

“This predominantly affects people using Skype for Windows,” Skype said on its Web site. “We have identified the problem and will issue a fix in the next few hours.”

In the meantime, it offered steps that Linux, Mac and Windows users can take to sign in if they encounter problems.

Skype, which is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for some $8.5 billion, has had periodic issues, including a major outage last December.

UPDATE: In a blog post, Skype suggested that Windows users update to the latest version. A Mac for Skype update should be available tomorrow.

However, according to a graphic elsewhere on the company’s Web site (see above), that’s still short of the service at peak times (and one would assume that, absent an outage, two days before Christmas might be one of those peak sorts of times).

The blog goes on to mention a few of the other lingering issues. “Please note that some features may not work as reliably as expected,” it said, adding that “peoples’ online status may be slow to update, and instant messages might not be delivered as quickly as they are normally. Group video calling will take longer to return to normal.”

Of course, all that is a lot better than yesterday, when the bulk of the service was down for millions of people.

UPDATE, 11:50 am: Things are looking up, according to the latest post from CEO Tony Bates. He reports that there are now about 16.5 million users online, about 80 percent of normal for this time of day. And a make-good offering is in the works. “I realise that it’s difficult to compensate you for not being able to talk to or see your friends, family or colleagues, but we’re planning to offer Skype Credit vouchers to all of our loyal paying customers to thank you for your continued support,” said Bates.

Here’s the video of his message:

UPDATE, 3:02 pm: Another dispatch from Bates, this time reporting that traffic volume is up to 90 percent of normal now, the system has been stabilized and the engineers think they know what went wrong (and it wasn’t a malicious attack). Bates also offered a few more details on the customer compensation plan. Here’s the video:

“Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available,” Skype said in an explanatory blog post on its Web site. “Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype. As Skype relies on being able to maintain contact with supernodes, it may appear offline for some of you.”

The company says the solution is the creation of–wait for it–”mega-supernodes.”

“Our engineers are creating new ‘mega-supernodes’ as fast as they can, which should gradually return things to normal,” Skype said. “This may take a few hours, and we sincerely apologise for the disruption to your conversations. Some features, like group video calling, may take longer to return to normal.”

The company thanked everyone for their patience and said to continue following @skype on Twitter for further updates.

Update, 1:10 p.m.: Skype said in an update posted to Twitter that things are slowly getting back up and running.

“Skype is now gradually returning to normal–we expect it may take several hours for everyone to be able to sign in again, however,” it said.

A page deep in the company’s support site confirms the issue, but appears to significantly understate the problem.

“We are aware that some people are encountering difficulties signing in to Skype,” reads the company’s response on a FAQ page for those having connection issues. “Rest assured, we are working hard to fix this. In the meantime, we apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing you.”

Maybe the company was just trying to reinforce its warning that Skype is not a replacement for the telephone in an emergency:

Needless to say, this isn’t the kind of conversation the company was seeking to spark as it tries to build momentum for a pending stock offering.

Update, 10:45 am PT: A Skype representative said in an email that the company is examining the cause and extent of the outage and again apologized to users for the inconvenience. Skype said to follow its Twitter account (@skype) for updates.

The Silicon Valley startup is one of many companies exploiting the Internet to improve collaboration. It builds on several existing concepts, such as Web conferencing, Internet telephony and instant messaging. Sococo also leans on the notion of virtual spaces, pioneered by companies such as Linden Lab with Second Life.

David Van Wie, a veteran Valley entrepreneur who is Sococo’s CEO, says part of its inspiration came from a time when he and a group of professionals around the country were trying to put together a deal. “We were all sitting around with high-speed computers and networks,” he recalls, with access to advanced conferencing and collaboration tools.

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The government also has security concerns about Google Inc.’s Gmail email service and Internet telephony from companies such as Luxembourg-based Skype Ltd., the official told reporters.

“We will look into this one by one,” said the official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
A Google (GOOG) executive said the company hasn’t received any related communication from the government, and hence is unable to comment. Executives at Research In Motion (RIMM) and Skype couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
The official said RIM has assured that it will “come up with some technical solutions” for messenger and enterprise email services next week.

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And I suppose it is, given that eBay (EBAY) paid $2.6 billion for Skype in October 2005 and subsequently took a $1.43 billion charge on it.

“I think it’s worth a lot and I think the numbers speak for themselves,” he added. “There are not many properties that have that kind of growth.”

EBay plans to spin Skype off in an initial public offering in 2010.

The suit claims Vonage acquired the list during confidential acquisition talks between the two companies and has done SunRocket “irreparable harm and injury” by using it without permission. Vonage, for its part, acknowledges its confidentiality agreement with SunRocket but claims it legitimately purchased the list from a third-party broker. “We believe the suit lacks merit,” Vonage spokesman Charles Sahner told the Register. “We obtained a VOIP subscriber list through an established marketing list broker. We were assured that the data was legally obtained and could be used without violating anyone’s proprietary rights.”

If that’s truly the case, the deal worked out quite nicely for Vonage, which likes to fancy itself the belle of the VOIP ball despite its lousy financials and semi-dire legal straits. In the two days after SunRocket went belly-up, Vonage signed up 11,000 new subscribers–many of them old SunRocket customers. “We were the leader from the very beginning and we have that critical mass and the scale,” Sahner said back in July. “We helped put (SunRocket) out of business. They had a cheap product and they couldn’t compete.”

SunRocket, the “

You can almost hear the chorus of cheers over at Vonage, can’t you? Whoo, hoo, hoo- hoo- hoo … Though really, the company has little cause to celebrate. Since its ill-starred IPO, its fortunes, too, have floundered. Today its shares were trading for a while at $2.93–down, despite the sudden departure of one of its rivals.