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Packet8 has had standalone video units for at least the last 4 years that I recall. I seem to recall that they were 'featured' on one of the seasons of 24.

It's VOIP so works just like a phone but with full motion video. Seems pretty grandparent proof. Broadband required.
Video Phone

Many of us have tried Packet8 http://www.packet8.net/ as another option to Vonage. Personally I like Vonage and do not want to switch but if I have to I'm surely not going back to a Telcopoly.

I was actually very happy with SunRocket. Had them for over a year and only had a few hiccups in service. Couldn't beat the price, too bad for the people who paid a complete year.

Here is the e-mail message they sent out:

Dear Customers,

After significant effort by the Company to avoid this result, SunRocket is in the process of closing its operations and therefore will no longer be able to provide you with the phone service that you have been accustomed to. However, this email provides you with an opportunity to sign up with select service providers who we believe will offer outstanding replacement service

In order to assist you, we have entered into negotiations with a number of service providers. As a result of those negotiations, we have entered into agreements with 8x8, Inc., provider of the Packet8 service, and Unified Communications Corp., provider of Teleband service to offer you the best options and we are proud to recommend the following alternatives to you. Please make your decision to move to a new service provides immediately as future service is uncertain.

8x8/Packet8

The Packet8 Internet phone service incorporates patent protected technology from 8x8. Inc., a publicly traded company in business for more than 20 years. The service works in the same way as SunRocket.s and offers a virtually identical feature set.

No Startup Costs
FREE activation
FREE equipment
FREE shipping
FREE first month of service
Quickly port your number at no charge

A Savings of over $100!

Copy and paste the following link into your Internet browser: http://getpacket8.packet8.net/sunrocket/ or call 1-800-868-0068 and mention special offer code SUNROCKET

Unified Communications Corp./TeleBlend

The TeleBlend Internet phone service incorporates patent-protected technology from Unified Communications Corp., a privately held company in business to provide outstanding customer service and telephony products. Teleblends has been working behind the scenes already to restore and continue service for all Sun Rocket customers The service works in the same way as SunRocket.s and offers an identical feature set with our Unlimited Transfer Plan.
No Startup Costs
FREE activation
USE your existing hardware
FREE and Quick transfer of your current number
No Need to port your number to another provider
UNLIMITED calling to the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico

Copy and paste the following link into your Internet browser: http://www.myteleblend.net/

It has been our pleasure to service you at SunRocket!

Freedom, not a lack of it is the answer to the problems you think you see.

If you don't believe me, feel free to respond to this post and tell me what the best development environment / language to write Linux desktop apps in is. Okay, now what's the best distribution? While we're at it, what's the best text editor? With that as a context, now tell me about UI guidelines and keychain standards.

I don't believe you because every useful program has been made to work with every distribution without a lot of effort. Gnome, KDE, X, etc all works together in a way non free junk never will. It's about freedom, not marketshare or "standards". When you define real standards for interoperability, the rest takes care of itself.

Others have pointed to dlink and packet8 phones. Because free software has swept up the embedded market, they both probably use some form of gnu/linux. If they don't now, they will later. All that's really needed for these devices to thrive is well regulated public networks. Without that, we will probably waste another decade while "broadband" and IM providers battle it out with incompatible crap.

They've been slowly raising their rates regularly, so we're looking to switch to another voip provider, but Packet8 has a standalone video phone.

http://www.packet8.net/equipment/residential/video phones.aspx

One of the other independent VoIP's: Packet8, BroadVoice, Skype (In/Out)...

Though depending on how Vonage's saga plays out, their futures may be uncertain as well.

Sunrocket and Packet8 are also quite good, or at least that's what I've heard.

Sunrocket and Packet8 look like promising VOIP providers. I'll be switching to one of these shortly. I never liked the idea of Vonage being the 100 Lb gorilla anyway, they seemed to be a good example of the proverb about keeping 'all your eggs in one basket'. And as The big player in independent PSTN VOIP interoperability they also seemed taylor made for Verizon to come along and kill them off as an example to others, so they could keep their market position.

Also seems that if this Verizon patent is valid and actually being used by anyone who routes calls from IP to PSTN, then Verizon could possibly use this to kill off Comcast and RCN phone services depending on how they have architected their systems. Though they would presumably have some alternative to IP routing since they control their own wires.

I'm with packet8 and my only complaint is that I cannot manage voicemail online. Oh, and their site sucks. Maybe worth mentioning (I don't know how Vonage, etc do it): fees (of the federal variety) are not included in the price. They add about an extra $4 or so to my bill FWIW.

I've been with Vonage for about 3 years now and I'm in the same boat - looking for alternatives in case this ends up badly and I need to change providers. The two I found immediately are Packet8 and SunRocket. I'm just now reading a comparison article on them.

Skype is no good for me either, I want an adapter to plug into my broadband connection and light up my regular house phones like Vonage does, without the aid of an always-running Windows computer in the background. All the Skype phones and adapters I've seen to date need a USB connection to a computer.

i've never had any problems with packet8 http://www.packet8.net/, plus they offer E911.

Get that deaf finger out of your hearing ear! Deaf makes millions of video calls every day.

Check out the following Video phones immediately available today:

http://www.sorenson.com/
http://www.packet8.net/about/video.asp

Not to mention Gnumeeting, Netmeeting, and a bunch of other H.323/Video applications.

Any tax on our personal video communication is an unfair one-sided tax to a specific group of people, especially if hearing people can already communicate MUCH cheaper (less than 10 cents per minutes) than deaf people can (tax at a more per minutes or more unfairly by bandwidth).

I use http://www.packet8.net/

The price is great. The voice quality is good enough. Occationally I will get a blip in the conversion where it's like you lose the connection for a second.

I am satisfied. Does any one else use anything besides Vonage?

Why don't you have access to 911 services? All VoIP phone providers are required to provide E911 service, which will connect to the exactly same call center a POTS would. All you have to do is enter your full and correct address in the VoIP provider's system.

I am using Packet8, and I have full 911 service.

Packet8 has most international calls for less than $0.10/minute, most of Europe for less than $0.05. I don't know where you are getting the $0.50/minute - even the old phone companies don't charge that much anymore...

"Skype is currently the only provider to allow calls to landlines and cellphones."

I currently call landlines on stanaphone (via both softphone and hardware-based SIP), iconnecthere (both softphone and hardware-based), and packet 8 (hardware based). Skype is certainly not the only one allowing calls to the PSTN, and they're certainly not the most flexible.

Forget email, set her up with Packet8 or Vonage VOIP with a videophone, and get her kids the same. Set up a big speed dial to dial her kids.

http://www.packet8.net/

Disclaimer: I work for them, so I'm obviously a bit biased.

Regardless $99/VideoPhone is hard to beat, they work as soon as you plug them in, and they have video and jacks so you can plug them into any Video display, plus you get PSTN access as part of the monthly subscription fee.

well, I of course meant to link to packet8.net. I wish slashcode would allow editing of one's own posts.

I'm using http://www.packet8.net/ for my VOIP. Their tech support says that the latency shouldn't be greater than 300ms for effective use. My latency is usually between 900ms and 950ms. As long as it's under 1000ms, the call quality and voice delay is fine if not better than using POTS.

I'm using http://www.packet8.net/ for my VOIP. Their tech support says that the latency shouldn't be greater than 300ms for effective use. My latency is usually between 900ms and 950ms. As long as it's under 1000ms, the call quality and voice delay is fine if not better than using POTS.

Um, sorry wrong. Packet8 does . It is not a big deal to me but if it was I would have gone with them.

I've heard Packet8 is pretty good.

Packet8 International Rates

Their domestic rates are certainly cheap.

This story seemed like no big deal to me. I've been using my Siemens Gigaset 8825 with VoIP from Packet8 for several months now. Packet8 send you a network interface box that has an RJ-45 for your broadband connection and an RJ-11 for your phone, and boom! You're in business. Line 1 of my Siemens is landline (still needed for 911, faxing, and reliability during power failures); Line 2 is VoIP with unmetered long distance and an area code of my choice that gives my friends two states away the ability to call me with a local call. 20 bucks a month. You could do the same thing with Vonage but they're 25 bucks a month. IMHO, using VoIP with Packet8 or Vonage is much preferable to Skype because
a) It doesn't require a computer in the loop.
b) It works with any telephone.
Of course it could be better; it could be open source hardware so we could build/program the network interface boxes ourselves, but hey, it ain't bad for now.

Of course, they also have those phones that plug into the USB port... since long time ago. Or run a fax machine in the second port (up to 3 devices with Packet 8).

So, how is this news or better from what has been available for quite a while?

I just wish they'd open up their codec and let the rest of the world use it. It is awesome, sounding just as good as if the person was standing in front of you. My packet8 sounds like shit compared to it.

8x8 Inc. is another VOIP provider cheaper than both with anytime unlimited LD at $20.55 bottom line per month.

They also offer 911 service that I haven't tried for an extra $3, you just have to make sure you provide your latest address.

I have been pretty happy with it, reception is better than my cell phone. They recently have signed deals to offer hardware with many online retailers, most notably amazon.com and buy.com.

8x8 Inc. is another VOIP provider cheaper than both with anytime unlimited LD at $20.55 bottom line per month.

They also offer 911 service that I haven't tried for an extra $3, you just have to make sure you provide your latest address.

I have been pretty happy with it, reception is better than my cell phone. They recently have signed deals to offer hardware with many online retailers, most notably amazon.com and buy.com.

I don't know about other VoIP providers, but Packet8.net has been great for me. I've had friends use the phone at my house and explain to them that they need to dial 1+area code+number and then when they get off the phone I tell them the call went over the internet.

Usually, they are surprised that it wasn't a "real" phone conversation. I have sold a lot of people on it because it's only 20 bucks a month. I'm switching to BroadVoice when they have area codes in my state, because they give you the SIP username/password so you can use Asterisk Linux PBX.

Chris

For vonage the instructions are here while for Packet8 it's here.

I tried Skype a while back, but it didnt work out for me as it requires a computer on both ends. If they make a low power hardware device I can see Skype having a future, but I dont like leaving my computer on 24hrs a day. However, in the process I found a good VOIP solution that works great for me. I tried several VOIP providers, Packet8, Vonage and SIPPhone to cut down on my international long distance calling as I spend a lot of money calling my gf in Sri Lanka. My phone bill was over $300 using calling cards from pinzoo.com (at 22c per min), which I was pretty happy with, compared what I would have had to pay with MCI or AT&T (over $1 per min). Still this is a lot of money. So, I had to look into VOIP. First I bought a pair of Sip adapters from SipHone. My total was around $150 including all shipping costs. My plan was to get her ADSL for $20 a month and send a phone to her and have one over here for me. Sent it to her, but had trouble getting ADSL, so had to leave it for a while. Then I found Packet8 and Vonage, which also allows calls to traditional phones. Ordered Vonage from RadioShack for around $100, and activated it on line as they offered a better deal at the time when ordered thru RadioShack (1 month trial period as opposed to 2 weeks). Also ordered Packet8 using promotion code "bestdeal" for a total of aroudn $36 including equipment and activation. For my next5 trip to Sri Lanka, I took all these items with me, set up ADSL and was able to called here (USA) for free! Tried Vonage... had to mess aroudn with fire wall settings but finally got it working. Packet8 was a very install, just plug it in and it worked. Tried all three and Vonage and packet8 both seemed descent voice quality, but SipPhone had a bit of a cracking sound. Having all these working, now I had to make decision to which ones to keep after coming back. Packet8 had a 1 month trial, and by purchasing Vonage thru RadioShack, Vonage offered the same. Unfortunately, I bought SIPPhone a while ago, so no return on that was possible. After coming back, even before I could make the first call, SIPPhone died on me, and I didnt want to buy anew one for another $75... so left it alone. Vonage offerred the US and Canada unlimited service for $35 while Packet8 was only $20 for the same plan, so my decision was easy. Vonage also has a $15 plan, but only 500 minutes... adding $5 more gives me unlimited calling with Packet8. So, I returned Vonage and kept the Packet8 phone. Making this decision even more attractive was the fact that you can buy a Packet8 phone for a one time fee of $75 and call between Packet8 phones as long as you want for free. So, I ordered another Packet8 phone and sent it to my gf. She was able to set it up on her own, since it was only a mater of plugging it in. Infact Packet8 phone worked so well, that I disconnected my regular phone altogether. I wasnt too concerned about 911 calling since I have a cell phone and my roomate has a regular land line. Now only time I have to pay for international calls are when I call a regular international phone. I call my relatives and friends all over the US and my gf's Packet8 phone in Sri Lanka for free. Now my phone bill has dropped over $200 and we talk a lot more for free. Only time I have to pay long distance is when I call my gf's mobile phone. This is a great way for anybody whos been screwed by the phone company to lower the phone bill. Thanks for whoever invented VOIP and thanks for the Packet8 phone!

If any one is interested, I would highly recommend Packet8, which you can order from www.packet8.net Be careful though, not to disconnect your regular phone altogether if you have kids and in need of alling 911. Having a VOIP phone means you might be out of service in case of power failure or internet disruptions. One of my friends got the basic phone service from SBC for aroudn $10 and switched to Packet8 to make his outgoing calls.

So? So were most cablemodems until recently. VoIP is a new technology to the consumer market, it will take a while for one or two standards to settle, and when they do, just like most things like DVD formats and Cable modem protocols and such, firmware gets upgraded and no one cares. Besides, so their proprietary, what di you want to do, take your hardware and move to some other linux-native VoIP provider? Wait...there aren't any.

No excuse, sorry. There exist OPEN standards, PUBLISHED standards out there that are supported by hundreds of hardware and software solutions.

As for "Linux-native" VoIP provider, that makes no sense. Who cares? There are hardware and software solutions available for Linux and utilize existing open and published standards. Do some research on Google to find them.

Who cares what protocol you speak from your headset unit to the 'Net, once it gets to the 'Net it's IP. When it gets to the phone system, it's converted to proprietary digital forms that Sprint or AT&T use, and when it reaches another VoIP carrier, it might convert to another protocol. It doesn't matter though, the frmat is meaningless to the data.

Propretary digital formats? You mean, u-Law? Nice try. Even the larger nascent VoIP providers don't resort to such foolishness because they are able to leverage EXISTING solutions. What is important is to be able to transit between providers easily and seemlessly. Consumers have been asking for this from cellphone providers for YEARS (i.e., locked-in phones) and the FCC and courts have finally taken notice.

There are no pictures in Voice. If you want videoconferencing, use another service. But if you want good audio quality, use a service that utilizes all of your available bandwidth for audio (go figure, a specialized service works better than a general one).

VoIP has been somewhat generalized lately. Packet8 provides a videophone now to customers. Moving from a circuit-switched environment to a packet-switched environment allows all kinds of new things to be done that could not be easily accomplished before across the same infrastructure. SIP, one commonly used VoIP signalling protocol, even includes support for multiple data streams to be handled at once, voice, video, and even text and application data (for IM or whiteboarding, for instance). Don't be so limited in your view.

Aha. That does sound like the right answer to why the 1+ dialing is there in the first place.

But in New York (or on my VOIP phone), where 11-digit is mandatory and 7-digit dialing doesn't work, you can't dial seven digits. So if you dialed 413-5112, that would logically have to be interpreted area code 413, exchange 511, and it should wait for the rest of the number.

But it doesn't do that. It just sits there and gives you a fast busy signal. I guess they don't want it to be inconsistent with the way the rest of the country does it, otherwise New Yorkers would be visiting California (where 7-digits is valid for local numbers) and ring random people trying to dial 213-555-6789.

I know for a fact that Vonage has a 911 service. I've called it. they just ask you your full address beforehand. that's the only reason I didn't go with over Vonage, as they didn't have a 911 service.

I live overseas and have tried many of the cross platform clients (my wife's brother is only a Max OS guy). We never could get anything that really worked (I think we got yahoo working decently once for voice only).

Eventually we discovered Packet8 It's solved all our problems and we use it to call parents and great grandparents as well. I assume you both have broadband (since your GF has a router) and the costs is minimal ($20 month - unlimited minutes, free adapter). Lose you landline and pick this up instead. One other trick would be to get telephone numbers in each others city. That way you can use your local POTS to call her from anywhere and it would be a "local" call.

We love Voip. It allows us to receive calls via a US telephone number here as well. The whole thing works just like you'd expect and call quality is good.

I live overseas and have tried many of the cross platform clients (my wife's brother is only a Max OS guy). We never could get anything that really worked (I think we got yahoo working decently once for voice only).

Eventually we discovered Packet8/a It's solved all our problems and we use it to call parents and great grandparents as well. I assume you both have broadband (since your GF has a router) and the costs is minimal ($20 month - unlimited minutes, free adapter). Lose you landline and pick this up instead. One other trick would be to get telephone numbers in each others city. That way you can use your local POTS to call her from anywhere and it would be a "local" call.

We love Voip. It allows us to receive calls via a US telephone number here as well. The whole thing works just like you'd expect and call quality is good.

For a startup company the business model looks pretty attractive, minimal hardware, minimal bandwidth management...

They already have a few competitors who are leading a "race to the bottom" on rates ($20/mo, in the case of Packet8).

I think with several major companier launching plans for VoIP in the last month or so it will begin to catch on faster from here. Several call centers are replacing thier old PBX systems with VoIP with a 3 to 4 month ROI for the new equipment cost.

Actually, it hasn't all been remedied. Packet8 still does not support number portability so you have to get a new number to use Packet8. See here.

Unfortunatley, the article only briefly (very briefly) covers Vonage's competition. I'm using Packet 8 and have been for some time now. I've found their customer service to be EXCELLENT, unlink the article suggests - Perhaps the author of the article did not realize that they are based on the west coast, and while many people believe this to be true, the world does not revolve around Eastern Time - Before anyone starts screaming - Im also on the east coast.

Anyway, we had the packet8 service installed about 6 months ago, unfortuntatley before number portablility was available, so we got a fresh new number. I had a minor problem in the begining, since my firewall (sonicwall) had a known incompatibility with H323 packets, This has since been fixed with a firmware update on sonicwall's side, but I solved the problem just by putting the phone directly on the WAN ( I pay for 5 IP's, might as well use them).

Voice quality and overall satisfaction was poor to fair in the first month or two. The phone numbers would come into the caller ID boxes all garbled up, since they would add a "1" to the beginning of the number, making the CID info all skew by one digit.Also, the time CID info was Pacific Time, not local time.

This has all been remedied since then. We've bought our first house and I brought the packet 8 device with me, plugged it into my network and installed a jack in the basement near where my network is setup. Simply plugged the device in, and we were up and running. The big bonus is we don't have to change our phone number, or pay bastard child SNET (SBC) any money.

I'm sure this is where VOIP has a big market - People like me who have been burned hard by the local phone company- you know, the guys that never care about you or me.

So, Give packet 8 a try - I'm happy, and I believe they offer a risk free trial.

Tell that to packet8 - $20 per month, unlimited local and long distance. It isn't the telephone company offering lower prices, but VoIP in general leads to more $$ is your pocket.

that I can get for 25 bucks from vonage

Actually, you can get UNLIMITED (North America) for $20 from packet8.net. Seriously, Packet8 should subcontract all of the independent geeks out there and offer $25/month service with a $5/month comission to the installer. I recently set up a 4-line packet8 system for a partner's (at my employer) home. It is saving him approximately $700/month over PSTN and I'm wishing that I'd get a piece of that aside from the initial fee that I charged...

It is only a matter of time before the wireless routers out there start building in SIP/2.4ghz cordless phone functionality. I'll laugh if I ever buy a Linksys or Netgear cordless phone.

Sigh...

Sure it can be encrypted, but there is some fairly significant overhead involved, without crypto hardware, I think you would notice degraded conversation quality.

I am pleased to report that the crypto part is not a problem. According to its documentation, Skype employs a 256-bit AES cipher -- currently sufficient to please even the paranoid -- and on my lowly 400 MHz P3 box such a conversation uses about 40% of the CPU. The sound quality is about the same as POTS and only slightly worse than my Packet 8 service (VOIP).

What surprised me most, however, is that the time-delay with Skype was, to my ears, about the same as with Packet 8! This is fairly easy to test. Call your cell phone from your VOIP phone and put one on the left ear and the other on the right, while making utterances of your choice. If you have two PCs where you can connect one to a VPN (to give the data some distance to travel), you'll be able to do the same with two separate Skype accounts.

• Cheaper... unlimited local and national calling is only $22.50 (that includes all the extra taxes/addon fees) (though the FCC might add on extra charges next year)
• A lot of current features (caller ID, caller ID block, calling other lines if you don't pick up your VoIP phone) that seem like they don't cost the phone company anything, actually are free
• There are extra features you can't get anywhere else (or can't unless you're a big company with a digital call center)
  • number portability even if you move out of the area code or even the country (since your same phone number can be accessed anywhere there's internet access)
  • email notification of voice mail, with the option of including a sound file of the message
  • Multiple phone numbers going into the same line, complex filters indicating how they might be forwarded to different lines, different ring patterns, etc...
  • greater web integration (configuration of the account's features, realtime updates of your bill)

Packet8 doesn't support 911, and a couple others i looked at don't either. But given that Packet8 is sooo much cheaper, I'm going with it if I ever switch over.

A couple days ago this /. article asked whether price competition would run VoIP-to-POTS companies out of business. It specifically mentioned Packet8, Vonage, and VoicePulse. I've been considering switching to a VoIP-to-POTS provider for quite a while now, and wonder what experience other SlashDotters have had with these or related services. To be specific, I want a solution that lets me use my regular analog phone through my broadband connection to call POTS users (e.g. my mom) AND gives me a phone # for others to call me. Solutions like Net2Phone (which I've used for years) or Skype that require me to use headphones/mic in front of my computer just don't cut it. Nor do I want to buy any new hardware (like SIPphone requires). Recent /. articles discuss Skype Vs. SIPphone and Other VoIP issues, but none contain the sort of info I'm looking for. What advice can you give about cost, performance, security, ease-of-setup, etc?

I'm not saying that any of the companies below actually employ the platforms listed in their VoIP applications/implementations, but I definately think it's interesting to see the comparison (IBM vs Mainstream Market).

Packet8 runs Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
WebPhone.com runs Microsoft-IIS/6.0 on Windows Server 2003.
Sonexis runs Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
Skype runs Apache on FreeBSD.
SIPphone runs Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.3.2 mod_fastcgi/2.2.12 mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.14 OpenSSL/0.9.6b on unknown.

Does anyone have information on other corporate VoIP-PBX solutions?

Vonage and Packet 8 provide similar services. There is a lot of commentary in the comp.dcom.voice-over-ip Usenet group about it. I personally have Vonage, which I liked because in my cases they could transfer my existing phone number from the local telco, but perhaps other companies have similar capability. The connection is very good and I've only had a few startup problems. (Most important: work with the VoIP provider to make sure your router is configured optimally.)

• Talk point-to-point using my computer, headphones, and a microphone
• Or buy two IP phones for $75/each to talk to one other person for free

• A real phone number
• Voicemail
• Dial any phone in the world
• Get calls from any phone in the world
• Still get free long distance
• Still talk free user-to-user

VOXILLA.COM Staff Report

It says a lot about the future of internet telephony that two of the most successful bad boys of the internet - Kazaas Niklas Zenstrom and MP3.coms Michael Robertson - have turned their attention to promoting the growth of Voice over IP.

Both Zenstrom and Robertson incurred the ire of the music industry and the Recording Institute Association of America because the technologies they helped establish made it much easier to download copyrighted music over the net. Robertson came first by helping to make the MP3 compression format the ubiquitous standard for audio on the net. Zenstrom followed by releasing Kazaa, which quickly became the most popular P2P program used by music sharers around the world.

Now the pair are slashing away at a whole different breed of industry titan: the giant telephone companies. But, though they share a common adversary, they have chosen to fight their new battles in entirely different ways.

Zenstrom is hoping to bring the telephone giants to their knees with Skype, an IP-to-IP VoIP software program that currently works only in Microsoft Windows and utilizes a proprietary protocol to establish voice connections between its users. Banking on the popularity of Kazaa, Zenstrom says more than 1.2 million users worldwide have downloaded Skype.

Robertson, on the other hand, has chosen a totally different route. His SIPPhone.com provides users with two telephones for less than $130. The SIPPhones, manufactured by Grandstream, connect to an Ethernet port and utilize the SIP protocol, which is quickly becoming the de facto standard for IP-to-IP voice communications.

Robertson is hoping that SIP becomes as widespread as MP3, and believes SIPPhone will help carry it a large portion of the way there.

In a way, Robertson is trying to do with SIP what he did for MP3 and later with Linux with his still-kicking Lindows operating system: Take a technology that works well but is understood only by the geekiest of computer users, simplify it to its most basic form, and market it to typical consumers directly.

Robertson still does not know how his new company will ever make a profit. His goal is to make it available to millions of users and go from there. Having sold MP3.com to Vivendi for more than $370 million in 2001, he can probably take his time to get there.

We caught up with Robertson during VON 2003 in Boston last month. Heres our conversation:

Voxilla: The SIPPhone has been out for nearly two months. So whos signing up?

Michael Robertson: I would say that probably the number 1 feedback we get is that its from international users. Theyll get two phones, theyll try them out and then theyll email us with Hey, Im ordering two more because I have a friend, or a co-worker, or an office in, fill in the foreign country here, India, China, Mexico. Thats one of the key uses were seeing initially.

V: Do you see international use as the major driving force behind VoIP growth?

MR: Yes. Thats where people pay huge phone rates. They want to avoid those huge phone bills. Thats where the phone bills get the biggest because you have private and government monopolies that own a lot of these companies. So it makes economic sense.

V: SIPPhone has announced an interconnectivity agreement with Packet8. Are you interested in doing the same with others, such as