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Gizmo Project voice calling and IM is booming on Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and Linux computers because Gizmo Project works well and connects with every type of device like wifi phones, other VOIP and IM directories like GoogleTalk and even the popular open source Asterisk PBX software. I think people are beginning to understand the difference between Skype who walls their customers in and won't play nicely with anyone and SIPphone who connects to everyone making it possible to have just one address. Next week SIPphone will announce closing of a major venture capital deal which will help the company grow even faster.

While there certainly are the Vonages of the world, there are far more VoIP services that permit you to connect any phone you like.

Once Google Talk offers their service via SIP and most importantly allows federation with others, they will become the glue that binds together all the currently fragmented voip offerings. Providers that don't want to open up and federate with Google will slowly dissappear. After all it won't be long and most the people that you talk to will not be on landlines, but IP only, and you therefore don't want a provider that is not connected.

If I was an incumbent telco in any part of the world, I would be scared, I would probably try dirty games such as providing restricted internet access with SIP traffic filtered out.

I initially had planned on using skype for my long distance. However I soon grew tired of being tied to the computer with a headset. While there are some ways to get a regular cordless phone to work with skype, all involve having a computer running. You can also purchase stand alone voip phones that are skype compatable for the small price of $200+.

I finally settled on buying a Sipura voip adapter and service from SIPphone. Setup was pretty easy and now instead of my $60 phone bill I have a $10 - $15 bill. After two months it paid for itself.

I have this:

http://sipphone.com/dlink/

With http://voipjet.com/ for 1.1c/min for US calls, and http://connect.voicepulse.com/ for an incoming line for $11/month for unlimited incoming minutes.

Mind you, the incoming line is, in the end, optional. And you can add money to your voipjet acct whenever you feel like it. Yes, it requires a unix server, but seriously, on Slashdot, if you don't have one, you must be new.

No ads either. =)

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

Oh, really? What happened to all the H.323 and SIP based services? Did they all vanish?

Ok, we admit it's a lame name, but we think the product is solid. Here's why it's significant:

- It is based on SIP so other SIP hardware and software should interoperate. Check out http://www.siphardware.com/ for some of the hardware devices. I have a Call-in-One so a SIP call rings my home phone. Even a wifi SIP phone should work with Gizmo.

- It navigates firewalls and NATS. Skype has done this well, but SIP clients have generally not. Gizmo Project should penetrate just about any firewall or NAT setup. I used it successfully on Boeing's wifi service on flight to Frankfurt 2 weeks ago bouncing calls off satellites.

- It's Mac/Win today and YES, there will be Linux client shortly. No, really.

- We're committed to an open directory meaning that we will interconnect with everyone. We already connect to many big and small networks. See: http://sipphone.com/numbers/. We do enum lookups. We even support the intriguing DUNDI extension for Astericks. I want VOIP world to be like email where one address is reachable by everyone. I hope VOIP does NOT become like IM where AOL can't talk to MSN who can't talk to Y, etc. If you care to read more about why I think this is important, you can go to: http://michaelrobertson.com/.

- All calls on IP network are free as is voicemail, call recording, conference calling, etc. (try calling 1-222-xxx-xxxx and create an instant conference call with unlimited number of callers.) Only have to pay if touching the PSTN. We do give you 25 cents for free to check out the PSTN quality.

- Be nice because it's just beta software! Thx.

-- MR

Actually, I think this is an offshoot of another Michael Robertson company, SIPPhone.com.

http://sipphone.com/phonegaim/ has been around for awhile. =)

They aren't exactly a victim... they just get made when people do it to them...

http://sipphone.com/press/pr_sep30_2004.html

Vonage locks hardware without informing users... but that's not anti-competitive.

Now all it takes is a $60 SIP adapter or a free softphone and you can let your friends call you for $.02 per minute.

Now all it takes is a $60 SIP adapter or a free softphone and you can let your friends call you for $.02 per minute.

I thought about the tools to audio blog and have devised a free solution utilising a telephone, but haven't had the chance to do a proof-of-concept yet. It requires you to sign up for a free SIPphone.com account (via their free softphone download). To do a quick audioblog (or a voice memo for that matter): 1) you dial the SIPphone number---if you're on a PSTN network, you dial one of the access numbers and then your sipphone number; 2) you leave a voice mail; 3) under your sipphone settings, the voicemail is sent to a specific email address; 4) similar to blogging by email, you can setup your receiving email address to accept the wav files from SIPphone.com and have your server convert it to mp3 (or keep it as a wav) and publish it on your blog automatically. I also have a tip on how to record your sipphone conversations using Linux on my blog---it's a great way to do phone interviews that you want to publish.

My wife and I are planning to use Tlenofon for her calls to Poland. We will also have a local Polish phone number for her family to call.

For other uses, Sipphone will be used.

Tlenofon uses Asterisk and supports linux clients using the IAX protocol. Sipphone supports connections via SIP. Both are great choices for users of Asterisk.

I needed to call indonesia, and my long distance provider gave me a rate of over $6.00 per minute without a special intl calling plan. With a calling plan, it was $0.80/minute, but the plan was $9.00 per month, so even if the call was only going to be a minute long, I'm still paying almost $10.00.

So I went to SIPPhone, bought $10.00 worth of minutes, used it to make my five minute call to find out why a furniture maker I'd contracted with had not shipped out the items (they had, just not the paperwork), and had $9.00 left. I've called Germany and Japan with it since then, and I've still got $7.00 left. I've even used it to check my messages while stuck on hold on my regular land line. It's pretty sweet.

Don't know about using the software behind corporate firewalls. I'm just behind a basic NAT box with minimal filtering. And I don't know about open source, but their basic software is indeed free, at least as in beer.

Sounds like SIPphone.com's access numbers except you get to call anyone in the PSTN. For those of you not familiar with SIPphone's access numbers, it's one of the greatest services I've known that is free (like Netzero was free back in the day). Say you have a bunch of friends all over the country, each with broadband access. They all purchase analog telephone adapters for their phones from SIPhardware.com and sign up for SIPphone's service (free service, hardware is not free) and plug into the broadband. SIPphone to SIPphone calling is free, but you can also call a SIPphone on a regular phone line via the access number local to you. I think the access numbers also work for peer networks such as freeworldialup. Try it out, I think it's well worth the $60 upfront cost.

I have to second this advice to SIPphone.com. There are number of benefits to going with SIPphone that the beginner may not realize. But first the cons:

1. There are upfront costs for hardware, unless you just go with the free softphone (X-ten lite). The hardware runs around $50.
2. Quality is not so good if you have shoddy upload rates (but this is general downside to VoIP in the real world and not unique to SIPphone).

But the pros are definitely worth the cost:

1. The ability to call other VoIP users in other networks (such as to FWD, IPtel, and IAXtel users). However, FWD has better peer access, allowing you to call Vonage users and other paid networks.
2. Nationwide access numbers are available. So, for example, you could call the access number on a regular landline (PSTN line, in VoIP lingo), and then be able to connect to a SIPphone.
3. Virtual numbers are available for purchase pretty cheap (about $6 a month) and all incoming calls to a SIPphone is always FREE! A virtual number means that you can have, say a phone number that's specific for a geographical region--for example, you can have a 610 area code number for the Philly area and have people call that number whenever they want to connect to your SIPphone. The benefit of this is: if you wanted to setup a dedicated fax line to just receive faxes, this is the way to go. As a price comparison, getting an eFax line is $12.95 a month (twice the virtual number price) and you don't get unlimited faxes.
4. The hardware you buy from SIPphone is NOT locked, which means that if you don't like the service, you can take it elsewhere. But from my own experience, it's about on par or better than other services such as Broadvoice.
5. Best of all, it's FREE! No monthly payments forever, nada, zip, zilcho. You just pay the upfront costs of the hardware and even then the prices are very competitive compared to outside (i.e. eBay). In fact, if you're just looking to buy fair priced VoIP hardware, I'd buy from SIPphone.

I realize that this post sounds like an advertisement for SIPphone, but in actuality, I'm a SIPphone user who's just real happy with my service. I wanted to let you know also that if one of your buddies go to school at UCSD, they can dial any SIPphone from their phone line anytime, free of charge to use. I've recently posted some thoughts about the whole VoIP service for the consumer on my blog http://linuxathome.com, perhaps you could check it out.

I have to second this advice to SIPphone.com. There are number of benefits to going with SIPphone that the beginner may not realize. But first the cons:

1. There are upfront costs for hardware, unless you just go with the free softphone (X-ten lite). The hardware runs around $50.
2. Quality is not so good if you have shoddy upload rates (but this is general downside to VoIP in the real world and not unique to SIPphone).

But the pros are definitely worth the cost:

1. The ability to call other VoIP users in other networks (such as to FWD, IPtel, and IAXtel users). However, FWD has better peer access, allowing you to call Vonage users and other paid networks.
2. Nationwide access numbers are available. So, for example, you could call the access number on a regular landline (PSTN line, in VoIP lingo), and then be able to connect to a SIPphone.
3. Virtual numbers are available for purchase pretty cheap (about $6 a month) and all incoming calls to a SIPphone is always FREE! A virtual number means that you can have, say a phone number that's specific for a geographical region--for example, you can have a 610 area code number for the Philly area and have people call that number whenever they want to connect to your SIPphone. The benefit of this is: if you wanted to setup a dedicated fax line to just receive faxes, this is the way to go. As a price comparison, getting an eFax line is $12.95 a month (twice the virtual number price) and you don't get unlimited faxes.
4. The hardware you buy from SIPphone is NOT locked, which means that if you don't like the service, you can take it elsewhere. But from my own experience, it's about on par or better than other services such as Broadvoice.
5. Best of all, it's FREE! No monthly payments forever, nada, zip, zilcho. You just pay the upfront costs of the hardware and even then the prices are very competitive compared to outside (i.e. eBay). In fact, if you're just looking to buy fair priced VoIP hardware, I'd buy from SIPphone.

I realize that this post sounds like an advertisement for SIPphone, but in actuality, I'm a SIPphone user who's just real happy with my service. I wanted to let you know also that if one of your buddies go to school at UCSD, they can dial any SIPphone from their phone line anytime, free of charge to use. I've recently posted some thoughts about the whole VoIP service for the consumer on my blog http://linuxathome.com, perhaps you could check it out.

If not, where could I find a RJ-11-to-VoIP converter for my base station?

For an (almost) impartial view of this, see Michael Robertson's reasoned write-up.

This sort of price model is much easier with VOIP. Just buy your own adapter or use a softphone and there a plenty of places that will sell you minutes.

Check out http://www.sipphone.com/

It has all the VOIP companies beat, and running scared. I use it to talk with my mom close to 4k miles away, with very little stuters. DSL Dial Up.

You can use your own phone, computer, or buy a special SIP Phone that works with your regular phone as well.

And from what I can tell, you only pay for over seas calls.

So don't get locked in to VIP Phone, they are playin the M$ game against SIPPhone. And they charge an arm and a leg. Must be the same manager's school teaching these guys, and M$.

PhoneGaim is also supposed to be better because it's Open Source, with an open network, something that Robertson has said is what would keep Skype from merging with Gaim or some such.

Well, SIPPhone has done this for a long time...

The service (with 5 minutes free etc.) used is SIPPhone, the company that was started by the Lindows guy.

The 5 minutes for free can only be gotten by using phonegaim ON lindows, buying a SIPPhone device, or by buying $20 of SIPPhone minutes. Not actually free, then, just included with the cost of your purchase.

Note that you can only call people if you're BOTH using phonegaim. You could just exchange (S)IP numbers and use any normal SIP client for the same effect. Nothing to see here. There are already dozens of free SIP clients.

Note that skype, while a cooky closed-source, non-standard product, does have good support for using it behind NAT, which is harder with SIP. (Personally, I say, give me the IPv6 already).

Does vonage use SIP? I would think not, but I noticed that both use the same softphone
http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=softpho ne
http://sipphone.com/softphone/

Don't tell me Xten thought ahead and created a transport abstraction so that either could be used... cause I want to use GAIM with my vonage account!

If you want an easy solution I use sipphone.com

This is a voip solution that allows calls to and from landlines. There are windows and Linux clients available too.

SiPPhone's forums: packet loss and connection problems

I have been using the Call-in-One adapter for two days, and I am still unable to get a good call quality - people are not able to hear me very clearly. The quality so far is worse than the PC to telephone services like 4ecalls. I hope that this will improve.

Just one other question, while I am making a SIP call, the "activity" light is not steady. Is this normal?

If you want to use voip for out-going calls only, you don't need to use Vonage. You can use something like iconnecthere or as someone else mentioned sipphone. They both have a software phone and low pay-as-you-go rates so you can try them out with very little investment. I use iconnecthere, it's not the greatest but it gets the job done. I may try sipphone soon.

The Linspire (Lindows) folks have quite a nice one called sipphone. I particularly like how you can plug your ordinary phone in. They're a fairly new player so currently low prices may not last.

you can pick up an adapter for just $50 or so.

They also have a "Call in One" which allows you to merge a PSTN phone line and a SIP line so you can send and receive calls SIP or PSTN calls from the same phone system.

SIPphone.com

They also allow free PSTN calls from their phones, but it is limited to 5 1 minutes calls each day. Still, that's better than anyone else in the world.

Picked up a SIP Phone Call-in-One and I've got to say, I'm really impressed. It does exactly what they say it'll do, it does it well and it does it cheap. Living in Madrid, until now, meant I was sort of cut off from my brother. Now, I call him whenever I want, talk as long as I want and it doesn't cost me anything other than the bandwidtch charges for the DSL connection that I was already paying. Definitely impressed.

Also, we've been using the SIP Minutes thing to make calls to Canada, Chile and and a couple of other countries - all to PSTN numbers - and we're really happy with the cost (cheap as dirt and no monthly fee or anything stupid like that), the sound quality and ease of use are excellent.

My only complaint is that they won't hurry up and set up Virtual Numbers. I'm thinking of starting a small business and being able to have a local number in Paris, NY, Toronto and Vancouver would really help me out. Having all of those numbers ring through to the same phone... beautiful.

Played a little with Skype (litterally, we were roleplaying and brought a friend in from another town) and I wasn't as generally impressed. Sound got wonky too often for my tastes although it could have been a bum mic.

Also, been toying around with this and I have to say this just makes my SIP Phone better. Friends from all over can call me, leave me a voice mail if I'm not there (which gets emailed to me of course) or, with this, I can (and have) set up some cool conference calls.

Picked up a SIP Phone Call-in-One and I've got to say, I'm really impressed. It does exactly what they say it'll do, it does it well and it does it cheap. Living in Madrid, until now, meant I was sort of cut off from my brother. Now, I call him whenever I want, talk as long as I want and it doesn't cost me anything other than the bandwidtch charges for the DSL connection that I was already paying. Definitely impressed.

Also, we've been using the SIP Minutes thing to make calls to Canada, Chile and and a couple of other countries - all to PSTN numbers - and we're really happy with the cost (cheap as dirt and no monthly fee or anything stupid like that), the sound quality and ease of use are excellent.

My only complaint is that they won't hurry up and set up Virtual Numbers. I'm thinking of starting a small business and being able to have a local number in Paris, NY, Toronto and Vancouver would really help me out. Having all of those numbers ring through to the same phone... beautiful.

Played a little with Skype (litterally, we were roleplaying and brought a friend in from another town) and I wasn't as generally impressed. Sound got wonky too often for my tastes although it could have been a bum mic.

Also, been toying around with this and I have to say this just makes my SIP Phone better. Friends from all over can call me, leave me a voice mail if I'm not there (which gets emailed to me of course) or, with this, I can (and have) set up some cool conference calls.

Yeah right. You bought the phone and didn't even see this list of other numbers and networks you can call from SIPPhone.com's service.

i got a free SIPphone software with my LindowsOS, you have to know someone who his also connected to the SIP network for this to work.. So its useless for me anyway..

Most of the commercial providers will solve these issues for you. I'm currently using vonage at home for my second line. I still keep a traditional landline for E911 and other functionality. The whole "where is your service located" issue is quite interesting on this front when you call emergency services. Since I could take my Vonage hardware with me to a friends house if I were traveling, it makes it quite tricky. Plus you don't need to have a phone number that is within your local calling area.

I'm interested in hearing from vonage (and other) VoIP users that have called 911 and if there were any complications..

The biggest challenge I see these days is VoIP is becoming like online music stores. Everyone is trying to get in the act of offering it because it's free from fees/regulation for the most part... The market will become saturated and the time to make money on the service will be gone fairly quickly.

I can now make unlimited, free calls to them, saving $100/month. What's more, there are no monthly charges for either of these services, all you have to do is buy the equipment -- which can be either a hardware IP phone, or a software phone.

You mean like:
SIP Phone
or snom
or Grandstream
or Pulver

and that's just naming a few.

www.sipphone.com

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?

You mean this?

Apparently you didn't go here...

You mean this?

Apparently you didn't go here...

From their web page, it looks as if you can call any other SIP phone:

Finally, you will want to call and talk to a live person. There are already thousands of numbers you can call. If you know a SIP number of a friend, you can dial it now or look up numbers on the SIPphone white pages. SIPphone lets you call users on other popular SIP services like FWD and Iptel as well. All SIPphone numbers will begin with 747 (it's optional to dial the first three numbers).

From their web page, it looks as if you can call any other SIP phone:

Finally, you will want to call and talk to a live person. There are already thousands of numbers you can call. If you know a SIP number of a friend, you can dial it now or look up numbers on the SIPphone white pages. SIPphone lets you call users on other popular SIP services like FWD and Iptel as well. All SIPphone numbers will begin with 747 (it's optional to dial the first three numbers).

From their web page, it looks as if you can call any other SIP phone:

Finally, you will want to call and talk to a live person. There are already thousands of numbers you can call. If you know a SIP number of a friend, you can dial it now or look up numbers on the SIPphone white pages. SIPphone lets you call users on other popular SIP services like FWD and Iptel as well. All SIPphone numbers will begin with 747 (it's optional to dial the first three numbers).

From their web page, it looks as if you can call any other SIP phone:

Finally, you will want to call and talk to a live person. There are already thousands of numbers you can call. If you know a SIP number of a friend, you can dial it now or look up numbers on the SIPphone white pages. SIPphone lets you call users on other popular SIP services like FWD and Iptel as well. All SIPphone numbers will begin with 747 (it's optional to dial the first three numbers).

At $129.99 for a set, that seems pretty expensive to me, especially if they can only be used with phones that are using a similar technology which there probably aren't too many of.

I already read about that a few hours ago on a German newspage and am currently waiting for SIPPhone's sales dep. to answer my questions :)

As you get 2 phones for $129 its not that big problem that you can only call other SIPPhones with that... I might buy a pair and give one phone to my girlfriend as she lives over 200km away from me and a priceless phone connection to her would lower my bill alot ;)

If anyone is curious about the quality, there is some info about that on their homepage saying:

SIP calls typically have very high audio quality. Call quality is much better than cell phones and may even be better than land line phones you're used to - especially over long distances and between countries. SIP uses the latest compression techniques which allow calls to sound their best.

Sounds ok for me :)