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I use kphone in conjunction with vic video conferencing. I can also recommend openmash for video. You need to make sure that the necessary ports are not blocked and tat you do port forwarding for incoming calls if you have a router. kphone is a real SIP/VoIP client. The SIP protocol does not look you in to a particular vendor (such as the Skype protocol does). However there are SIP providers with a gateway which only accepts certain providers.

VoIP not only needs to catch up but also be open like email, and unlike the divided IM space.
Unfortunately Skype is not the application which connects to an open network.

Only applications like Gizmo http://www.gizmoproject.com/ and many other ones (which I don't use) connect to the International Standard-compliant Protocol known as SIP.

If you want voice chat (VoIP) on Linux then you have a good selection too (I don't know which are SIP compliant and which are not though):

http://www.phonegaim.com/
http://cockatoo.mozdev.org/
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
http://www.linphone.org/
http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/
http://www.minisip.org/
http://www.sflphone.org/
http://www.sipfoundry.org/
http://www.twinklephone.com/
http://www.openwengo.com/
http://yate.null.ro/
http://www.divmod.org/projects/shtoom

In addition to the number of good IM clients for Linux (especially GAIM), if you want voice chat (VoIP) on Linux then you have a good selection too: PhoneGaim : http://www.phonegaim.com/ ( http://cockatoo.mozdev.org/ ( http://www.gizmoproject.com/ ( http://www.linphone.org/ KPhone : http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/ Skype : http://www.skype.com/ ( http://www.minisip.org/ SFLphone : http://www.sflphone.org/ SIPfoundry : http://www.sipfoundry.org/ Twinkle : http://www.twinklephone.com/ openwengo : http://www.openwengo.com/ Yate : http://yate.null.ro/ shtoom : http://www.divmod.org/projects/shtoom Best to get one that connects via 'SIP' and is entirely standard-compliant, then you can connect to anyone on other standard networks (except those in closed networks like Skype(???)).

How about xten, firefly, pulver, sjphone, sflphone, minisip, kphone, linphone, phonegaim? This is just the software I know of, there are probably many more that other people can add to the list. Which that would suit you depends of course on what your needs are.

In contrast to skype (and openwengo?) kphone f.e. uses standard codecs (G711u, GSM, iLBC for audio and H261, H263 for video) for communication. I'm using the provider voiptalk.org (website is currently down) to get connections to/from landline-phones (using GSM-codec) as well.

Here is a document on how to install it.

But maybe the Openwengo developers are planning to do this anyway (I couldn't see this from the project's website though).

I would have thought you'd be able to compile Kphone or Linphone on BSD perfectly happily.

You mean like http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/ or http://www.gnomemeeting.org/? kphone only has a few codecs and I can't vouch for it's full functionality since I haven't used it for calls (though it seems to authenticate me just fine). gnomemeeting doesn't do SIP yet, but they're working on it.

And, BTW, like others have said before Speex is unrelated to NAT.

for those who don't know what SIP is.

A number of years ago, the telecom providers got together and tried to do VoIP. They came up with H.323, which was a terrible mess and near impossible to do anything with. To top that off, you have to pay for access to the spec (I'm only pretty sure about this, please correct me if I'm wrong) So VoIP didn't go anywhere for a while.

Then the IP folks (the people who designed the internet protocols like IP, TCP, UDP, etc) came together and designed SIP. The entire protocol is described in a mere 150 page RFC. Anyone who's implemented a standardized protocol from a spec knows what a godsend a short spec is.

In short, SIP is a protocol designed by the Internet folks for the Internet. It's layered on RTP, so the audio quality degrades gracefully with the link quality. You can operate it point-to-point by simply running two clients on two machines and pointing one at the other's IP address. Or, if you want an easy to remember URL, you can sign up for a free account at places like fwd.pulver.net. You'll then be accessible as sip:username@fwd.pulver.net.

Google for "SIP softphones" and you'll find quit a few clients. The big ones on linux are kphone and linphone. Shtoom is making some headway also, and runs on linux, windows, and os x.

Skype decided they don't like either H.323 or SIP, went off and designed their own proprietary protocol, and is keeping it secret from everyone else.

I know nikotel works great on windows and macOS and as it is SIP compliant it works with linphone and kphone on linux.

If you're a geek willing to put some time into learning VOIP and Asterisk, the options are endless.

How about this? Her work would give her a "desk" with an analog phone. You put an old Linux PC at the "desk" with a Digium FX0 card. You then have another PC at her home with with a VOIP phone jack or a headset with SIP software (like this Windows or this Linux) or run Asterisk on her home Linux box and run IAX between the two.

Reliability would depend on the reliability of the IP connection between home/work. Because of Internet delay (and possibly delay from your VPN encryption), there may be a noticable delay on the connections, so it may feel more like a cell phone conversation than a land line.

If you don't have time to tinker and really care about reliability, just get a $30 nationwide unlimited plan from your local phone company or long distance provider (BellSouth/MCI/AT&T), expense it to work, and be done with it.

there is already a bunch of SIP talking linux soft-phones and supporting software.

kphone
linphone

some other supporting software
galago
sarp
sipimp

look at the freeworlddialup forums for lots of chatter about SIP softphones and using images on cisco hardware.
assorted other softphone downloads here.

The glaring practical difference is that there seem to be about zero open-source SIP servers, and about a dozen open-source XMPP servers (going off the list at JabberStudio which might not represent all of them.)

Iptel.org seems to be one; server, client software (though the KDE client seems to copied from Wirlab) and more. All GPL'd.