THE mobile-phone group 3 will tomorrow unveil its long-awaited Skype phone, the first to bring free international calls over the internet to consumers on the go.

It is the latest in a series of moves designed to revive the loss-making business, part of Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

More importantly, it marks a step change for a mobile operator to marry up with a technology player that jeopardises the industry’s business model – already under threat from regulatory cuts in the price of international roaming.

But 3 hopes the innovation will be attractive enough to boost loyalty. At present, some 30% of 3’s contract customers quit every year.

The 3 Skype phone has a prominent button above the standard keypad that activates Skype. Pressing it triggers an application that calls up a list of that user’s Skype friends who can be called for nothing on their mobiles or laptop.

However, the phone will not feature SkypeOut, which lets users make cheaper-than-usual calls to people who are not on the Skype service.

The provider is not expected to charge extra for Skype, as long as customers take out a contract with it or keep their prepay account topped up.

Early fears that Skype would gnaw hungrily into fixed-line revenues at the likes of BT have so far been unfounded. It has signed up 246m accounts globally, but only about 70m are thought to be regular users.

By contrast, auction site eBay, which owns Skype, recently admitted it had overpaid for the business by making a $1.4 billion (£682m) write-off.

The UK arm of 3 lost £464m in 2006, down from £1.4 billion the year before. It has 4.1m customers, though 1m are not active.

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