Last week Verizon and Skype held a joint press conference to announce that the companies were collaborating on bringing Skype to Verizon smartphones, but the longer you looked at the arrangement the stranger it seemed. The Skype offering works over Verizon's circuit switched voice network and not 3G -- and that the product nibbles away at your Verizon Wireless minutes -- and won't work with Wi-Fi. GigaOM now confirms that the agreement between the carriers is "exclusive," with Skype and Verizon striking a two to three year deal:Except it's not clear that anybody really benefits from this "exclusive," or that it really even is an exclusive anyway. What users want is for Skype to simply work via 3G like a normal application should, without their carrier implementing barriers (no Wi-Fi) and tying the service to the slowly dying concept of carrier minutes. Meanwhile, Skype was supposed to be preparing to launch just this kind of application for the iPhone in short order.

So there's two possibilities at play. One, Verizon dumped a wad of cash into Skype's lap so they'd avoid offering 3G applications for other smartphones. Or, Verizon dumped a wad of cash into Skype's lap to take a useful app, make it less useful, then tie it to traditional voice minutes -- while dressing it all up under the guise of exclusiveness and openness.