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... Thanks to my choice (VoIP + WiFi on my "smart" linux enabled (maemo) hand set) my total cost of ownership (TCO) is less than $100 per year. ... $24 per year for SkhypeIn (with SkhypePro) + $3.00 per month for unlimited calling...

Huh, if all you need is calling while next to a WiFi hotspot, "less than $100/y" remains way overpriced IMHO.
I use VoIP from my cellphone for maybe $10 to $20/y with SIPdroid + IPkall DID + JustVoip (or others) + optional: Asterisk, SIPBroker and E164. But all this is mostly irrelevant as my reason for having a cell is to call from places other than home or work = often without WiFi.

Back on topic: VMware stuff is IMO like that VoIP/WiFi stuff: sure cool, appealing to geeks. Good for PR / publicity. But otherwise limited practical usefulness, esp for non-techies...

If Virgin Media wants to continue to monitor your DNS requests they can just inspect the requests and log them as they flow through their network. You're not gaining any additional privacy by using Google's DNS. The way to do this properly is to have an encrypted DNS lookup like this. As far as I know this technology isn't working yet.

VoIP is going to be a VERY interesting space to watch over the next few years. With an old PC, I wired two small companies with PBX's, and connect them with multi-line capability through Sipphone.com for $0.01/minute, and no monthy fee or setup charge (sorry to sound like an add... here's another equivalent service: Vitelety.com). Further, in less than a year, you wont even need an old PC. Check out http://www.rowetel.com/ucasterisk/ip04. David Rowe is giving the world Asterisk capable hardware designs for free! My own feeling is that these things can be used as a bridge between the old analog days and the future (VoIP). A similar piece of hardware could act as an answering machine, and also determine if the number your calling even needs to route through for-fee services (using http://e164.org/). If the other end is listed in the free directory, your call will be FREE (in both senses - beer and speech). Look to AT&T to launch a major public smear campaign, push more insane laws, try to kill net neutrality (to kill VoIP), and file law-suits galore against VoIP providers. One downside... I'm not sure if I like the idea of Mom being able to call for free :-)

Well people are good at remembering telephone numbers....which is where 'enum' comes in.

see http://www.e164.org/

You register your VoIP account (etc.) under your land line (or allocated VoIP) number and when someone calls you their system does a look up and routes the call via the cheapest (nominally VoIP) route.

The nice thing is that they don't need to know where you are, or what method is used. They just pick up their telephone device and dial....

Simon.

Great observation - about the posts - and the reason that the Vonage IPO will be successful has nothing to do with how it performs as a technology or company.

Financial markets depend on the kind of rhetoric and hype you see in this series of posts - just a lot of buzz and most investors are only looking for movement to generate profits.

Public markets don't care about customer service, technology, and I might even add value - profits are focused on such short term movements that long term value is only something that generates interest for the smaller investor - generally the one that loses in the game. (some of us however have done far better than the pros - for example when my broker made a recommendation that I buy Lucent back in early 2001 - that was my trigger to sell everything and let the bubble burst, ;) ).

Just watch - and even invest up front if you're interested there will be short term profits to take here - unlike Google or Microsoft both continuing to generate real cash revenues.

P.S. - I've also tried Vonage - not bad - however with the use of an old PC, Asterisk and a connection to e164.org I make calls all day for a fraction of the cost of Vonage.

The list of competitors grows every day - and the prices fall every day.

If people used Asterisk Combined with e164.org free lookups the whole process becomes transparent, and people don't have to go out of their way to make "special" cheap/free calls, it can all be done automatically at the PABX/PBX level and all the person thinks is they've made a call, they don't care how it got to the person.

http://www.e164.org/ is p2p voip, it stores a voip url in DNS and then your program does a dns lookup if possible, along with SRV records allowing programs to easily use non-standard ports it's going to make it more interesting for govts to play catchup with technology in the coming years.

Having read the article, I'm amazed that one very important fact has been almost completely overlooked - namely that every call will have a charge associated to it.

Wrong.

If the VoIP world goes the way of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) then everyone will need to use a service provider to assist in routing calls outside of a business network.

And wrong. Go look at the ENUM system (http://www.e164.org/) which will translate PSTN phone numbers into VoIP URIs. Besides, I think in the long term the PSTN will die along with it's hard to remember phone numbers and we will be using URIs to phone people - when was the last time you emailed someone at their IP address instead of domain name? e.g. IAX2/pabx.nexusuk.org/slashdot is set up to give you the speaking clock :)

Secondly, in a SIP environment, any call needs to go via a SIP registration server

Again, wrong - if the IP address is known (i.e. you could've resolved it by DNS or ENUM) the SIP phone doesn't need to be registered with anything.

NuFone is good for outgoing long distance calls. They charge in 15 second increments to many numbers (others are 30 or 60 seconds) and are pretty darned cheap compared to other providers.

I have great luck with Vonage for my local calling (North America, flat rate is like, $45 p/m and gets you all the dandy doodads). I also have Asterisk setup to receive faxes and Email them to me, so far no corrupted pages at all and the bandwidth usage is pretty reasonable.

I have this setup on my Asterisk box (Vonage attaches using an X100P card ($100 from Digium for the real-thing, clones have been spotted for cheap including $0.99 but YMMV), NuFone is native IAX).

Cordless phone is attached using a Grandstream Ata-286, so I can wonder around the house with a cordless headset whilst talking to who-ever using VoIP.

and don't forget to register your number on e164.org, for native voip ;)

This is an incumbment free zone

The beauty of having a DNS root like e164.org is that calls can be entirely peer to peer. You're not sending all of your voice traffic through a single upstream like Vonage or Free World Dialup. If you ring my number, your local voip gateway connects directly with mine. Sure, if there's a hit on my local network or yours, then there will be lag issues. Alas that is the nature of the 'net.

Set up Asterisk to try an EnumLookup first, then fall back to NuFone or your home landline using a $16 X100P WinModem from DigitNetworks.

Get all your friends to register their phone numbers with E164.org too, it's a free ENUM service that also verifies people's numbers.

Then if you're really feeling groovy, help a local Community Wireless Network deploy an 802.11a backbone with 11g hotspots all over the place ;) Works great with Asterisk and serexpress. :)