It seems as though we soon won’t need traditional telephone service at all. The final old technology we were tied to was faxes, and now we’ll be able to send them over Skype. NetGen Communications, Inc., a spin-off of Commetrex Corp., has announced FaxIP for Skype. The product allows a Skype user to send faxes in real-time from fax machine to fax machine anywhere in the world absolutely free. NetGen says that FaxIP is not a virtual-fax or e-fax service that have a Skype file-transfer interface for store-and-forward support of fax-image files. It’s real-time fax relay across the Skype network. You feed the paper into the sending machine here, place the call, and it comes out at the receiving machine. In addition, NetGen’s patent-pending Skype-compatible technology takes advantage of Commetrex’ T.38 fax-relay, Skype’s peer-to-peer network, and a special version of the Eutectics IPP2000 RJ-11-to-USB converter. NetGen anticipates that the Skype-compatible product will be in retail distribution in the second quarter of this year. Although the target price of the solution has not yet been finalized, it is anticipated that it will be in the $60-$75 range, including the Eutectics IPP2000. Versions for Google Talk, AOL’s Total Talk, and other services are planned. Also, releases with enhanced functionality, such as real-time faxing from Microsoft Word, are planned for later in 2007.