There's a new little company in town, called EQO (say "echo"), and they've come up with a nifty way of making and receiving calls on Skype from your cell phone. There's a new little company in town, called EQO (say "echo"), and they've come up with a nifty way of making and receiving calls on Skype from your cell phone.

Here's how it works.

You create an EQO account and then download and install two applications. EQO PC is a plugin for your Windows PC running Skype, and the EQO Mobile is an application for your mobile phone.

Once these two applications are running, your EQO account allows you to extend your Skype buddy list to your phone. This means you can log in, see who in your buddy list is online, and make calls to them from your cell phone without even knowing their phone number.

When you call a Skype buddy or someone calls you from Skype, EQO routes the call to your phone over your regular wireless voice service using SkypeOut. You can also use EQO to call regular phone numbers in the US and Canada using SkypeOut (SkypeOut is free within the US and Canada until the end of the year). If you are calling anywhere else in the world, you will pay the already low international SkypeOut rates.

If you have a SkypeIn number, that's a regular phone number that people can use to call you, EQO routes the call to your mobile phone.

A couple of things to be aware of, though. Your PC running Skype must be on and NOT hibernating for EQO to work. EQO also uses some data traffic on your mobile phone so you'll need a appropriate data services plan from your cellular provider.

Your mobile handset or device must support MIDP 2.0, which is a specification for using Java on embedded devices like cell phones and PDAs.

Among the phones supported are: Nokia models: 3230, 3250, 6230, 6260, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 6682, 7610, 8801, N70 and N91

Sony-Ericsson models: D750, J300a, K500, K506, K508, K600, K608, K750, V600, W550, W600i, W800, W900, Z520a and Z800.

If you are an existing Skype user, or you are just tired of all the babble from VOIP broadband phone providers, it's worth a look.