Some news out of GigaOm, where it looks like Skype and Wal-Mart have struck a deal wherein Skype-branded products will now be carried by Wal-Mart.

All elitest snobbery aside, is anyone else wondering if the name “Skype” carries any cachet to the Wal-Mart crowd? I’m thinking, (as you might) probably not.

But, is Skype really so simple that it is now ready for prime time? (because getting distributed through Wal-Mart is nothing else but “prime time”)

I think the answer for this is “sort of“.

I use Skype — but I don’t use it instead of a normal phone service. Why? Well, I live in a condo. I would think about using some kind of VOIP service except that there’s no guarantee that it would mesh with the telephone network that allows me to buzz people into my building.

Which would be fine if you lived a life of solitude, without any hope of visitors — but like most people, I don’t live the life of a hermit.

What I *do* use Skype for is to make Skype-to-Skype calls, and take advantage of the cheap calls to land lines. $20 flat fee for unlimited calls to North American landlines for the rest of the year?

Hell yeah.

But in my opinion the thing that is the killer application for Skype is the very thing that makes it more like a phone, and less like some fancy schmancy VOIP device — and that’s a cordless USB phone.

The model that I have allows me to access the phone line OR Skype, which is great. I can use the handset like a phone whenever I want, and then with a flick of a button, make long distance calls through Skype without any problems.

Moreover, because its cordless, I don’t need to be tethered in front of a PC when I’m making my phone calls.

Just like an ordinary phone! :)

Om Malik makes some great points about the need for Skype to increase revenues to justify its purchase price. They make sense insofar that I don’t really understand the telephony industry at all, anyway. I still can’t figure out why eBay purchased Skype in the first place — or rather, how they justified its huge price, and their projections on ROI.

Nevertheless, is Skype ready for prime time? I’m thinking that the answer may really hinge on the hardware, more than anything else — in as much that its able to overcome the perception that its something that requires, or is tethered, to an actual PC.

But perhaps that’s just an elitest geek-centric way of thinking.