"He seems embarrassed to be there, an effect doubled by his lazy left eye, which looks one way while his right moves the other --- making conversation unsettling, as if Zennstr�m is permanently distracted.

He is not, of course. He is, in his Swedish-inflected English, an intense and articulate speaker with a lot to say --- so long as you don't ask him about money. That's because London-based Zennstr�m, who sold his internet telephony start-up Skype to Ebay for $2.6 billion (�1.5 billion) last month, is understandably wary about his new status as tech millionaire hero.

Skype was not the first telephone service to use the internet, but it is among the simplest to install and use. And it got its timing right, launching as broadband became increasingly available across Europe and Asia.

Most important, Zennstr�m, who started in Scandinavian telecoms, has waded through the difficulties of connecting Skype to other services, so users can make calls outside the network --- that, plus various add-ons, is how it makes its money.

With handsets coming on the market that allow you to use Skype like a conventional phone, and 68m registered users worldwide (180,000 join each day), you can see why Zennstr�m is confident. The national telecoms companies, he says, are simply too slow and too bureaucratic to catch up."