Hanover, Germany  - Skype, the popular phone-like service that lets people talk free over the web, plans a set of new services which it will charge for, chief operating officer Scott Durchslag said Wednesday at the CeBIT trade show in Germany.

In an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, he said these would include paying 20 cents to dictate a text message into Skype's servers and have it delivered by short-message service (SMS) to mobile phones.

Skype, which since 2005 has belonged to web auctions company eBay, has been searching for sources on income, since its main service is free. Durchslag said Skype would also aim to charge business users.

Currently one third of Skype users are on the service as part of their working day. Skype says it has more than 400 million users registered worldwide and gains 350,000 new users every day.

Durchslag spoke in Hanover on the second day of the March 3-8 CeBIT, the world's biggest combined computing and telecoms show.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, Skype unveiled its ambitious "Skype Everywhere" plans to enable users to converse via telephones, computers, television sets or car radios.

Durchslag said he expected a start next year, but the major expansion would take longer. Skype would concentrate on providing suitable software for electonics manufacturers' products rather than developing its own devices.

Skype turnover in the last quarter rose 26 per cent to 145 million dollars. Durchslag said it had been making a profit for two years. (dpa)