Skype - which is "not a telephony replacement service and cannot be used for emergency calling" - has snaffled up two techie VoIP companies.

The eBay-owned internet telephony giant has splashed out around $27m for Sonorit Holding AS and its US subsidiary Camino Networks, Inc.

The deal buys Skype some specialists in online voice engineering who will work with its own techie to design and develop future Skype products and services.

Based in San Francisco, and with other offices in Denmark and Sweden, start-up Sonorit and Camino Networks specialise in speech processing, coding, and transmission for the next generation of Internet-based networks. ®