The latest rumors swirling around Skype indicate auction giant eBay is in negotiations to buy the VoIP provider for between $2 billion and $3 billion. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that talks between eBary and Skype are at a “sensitive” stage and could still fall apart.

The report is only the latest this summer suggesting that Skype could sell for multiple billions, even though its revenue is reportedly about $10 million, and there is widespread speculation that SkypeOut, the paid VoIP-PSTN service, is not finding as much success as the free offering. The company cut the per-minute cost of that service earlier this summer.

News Corp. was earlier rumored to be interested in Skype, which provides a PC-based instant messaging type of Voice over IP service.

Whether Skype is able to reap a major acqusition deal could be a serious indication of how the investment community is viewing the early VoIP pioneers -- including Vonage with its proposed IPO -- as the technology moves into the mainstream and is widely adopted by cable companies and telecom providers. The former group is expected to make major inroads in the consumer market, at least in the U.S., while the latter is actively pursuing the lucrative enterprise VoIP market.

If eBay is pursuing Skype, it also would be a serious change in strategy for the Internet auction giant, as it would be taking on telecom companies for their service revenue.

“I believe, especially during the next five to ten years, that most phone customers will be split among the telephone and the cable television companies,” said telecom analyst Jeffrey Kagan, in an email post. “Customers may be using the same kind of VoIP telephone service that Ebay and Skype would offer, but since the phone company and the cable company will offer a big bundle of telephone, cable, internet and wireless services, they will probably compete for about 80% of the business while a whole host of smaller providers including wireless and VoIP providers will compete for the remaining 20%. However, this would be a big move away from the auction business for Ebay and could be a sign of a change in strategy for the company as the telecom industry begins to explode again.”

There has been speculation throughout Silicon Valley as to how eBay will reshape its business, along the lines of other Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo!, now that its auction/ecommerce operation is showing signs of slowing down. The company has a current market capitalization of $55 billion, but is looking for new sources of revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.