Toivo Annus, the head of engineering at Skype is leaving the company. This has been confirmed in Estonian press reports while Skype-News is first to announce to the world.

Toivo is head of engineering in the Tallinn office in Estonia where Skype is engineered and is guardian of the P2P (peer to peer) secrets of Skype. He will stay on until December 31st to assist new head of engineering, Ott Kaukver.

The reasons for his departure have not been given. Skype was recently purchased for several billion dollars by US American firm eBay/Paypal.

Skype is expected to announce that Mandriva a publisher of the Mandriva Linux operating system, that the Mandriva 2006 Linux operating system will integrate software from Skype that add Skype capabilities.

If my information is correct Mandriva Linux 2006 is the first, and only, Linux operating system to offer the Skype application.

Globally, VoIP traffic grew by 35 per cent in 2004, according to figures from telecoms market research firm Tele Geography. International VoIP traffic is expected to exceed 42bn minutes in 2005, representing over 16 per cent of the total international voice market.

Developing nations are the fastest growing destinations for international voice over internet protocol (VoIP) traffic. Brazil and Nigeria led the world in growth last year with 112 per cent and 103 per cent, respectively. Bangladesh was a close third with 97 per cent growth, followed by the Dominican Republic at 81 per cent.

Since 2001, Latin America has been the largest destination region for international VoIP traffic, with 36 per cent of the world market in 2004. Mexico accounts for almost half of the region’s incoming VoIP minutes, with 5.3bn. The economic impact on Mexican carriers is significant, as VoIP is now used to carry half of all incoming voice calls.