A research note fro Safa Raschtchy, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, suggests that Yahoo! Will release a competitor to Skype using peer-to-peer technologies to offer VoIP within the next few weeks.

Yahoo! Has offered voice communications through its messaging service for quite sometime, but the recent acquisition of Dialpad may have been provided the company the last bit needed for a complete standalone application.

Skype, with over 147 million downloads of its software and 30 million registered users, has recently hired Morgan Stanley to help find a buyer for the company or take it public (estimated $3 billion value).