"We're pleased to offer Skype Voicemail as an affordable premium enhancement to the more than 42 million Skype users around the world," said Niklas Zennström, CEO and co-founder of Skype, as his company today launched Skype Voicemail.

Skype Voicemail allows you to continually maintain your Skype availability and ubiquity, even while offline, Zennström (pictured below) explained.

"As we continue to enhance the Skype offering, we expand Skype's benefits to users and deliver more potential in modern communication and colloboration," he added.

First available in beta in April 2005, Skype Voicemail is Skype's second pre-paid premium offering. Customers with Skype Voicemail can leave unlimited voicemail messages for all Skype users when they are unavailable or offline, and can receive voicemails from any caller. Unlike standard voicemail systems, Skype Voicemail also allows customers the flexibility to send pre-recorded voice greetings to any other Skype user, regardless if the recipient is also a subscriber to the service.

SkypeIn beta customers from the eight countries in the beta test can also receive voicemail messages from ordinary fixed or mobile phones. Consumers can personalize Skype Voicemail, set their answer preferences, customize their greeting and receive messages up to 10 minutes long.

Also today, Skype released Skype for Windows v1.3, offering "feature improvements to enhance usability and ubiquity through extended integration with other desktop applications," the company said.