SkypeIn Reaches Beta Users

galdur writes "Skype quietly released a new 1.2 beta featuring SkypeIn (in US, UK, France, China & Hong Kong), central voicemail (for those not using the free 3rd party SAM or Pamela), and finally centralised contact list. SkypeIn is the opposite of the company's SkypeOut, allowing you now to receive normal telephone calls through Skype."

Comments

Import tools - odd choices (re changelog)

[CdBee]

Why on earth would they support collecting/importing contacts from Opera but not Mozilla/Thunderbird?

what are they aiming for?

[virtualone]

i think they are trying to puch the commercial skype platform in favor of an open standard, like enum. the great ease-of-use combined with well-thought technology (nat traversal, codec) may very well succeed, if there is no open source alternative established with the same features.

what about national regulations?

[xlyz]

It will be interesting to see how they will deal with each national telecom regulations.

Re:Nope

[Spoing]

1. The missing piece for me would be the ability to use a standard telephone, with an ATA (eg like the SPA-2000) with their service. I have no interest in using a PC soundcard (however hi-fi it may be) as a telephone.

Do you want something like this? It's cheap, provides a standard RJ-11 phone jack, and supposedly is compatable with just about any VOIP service out there. I haven't heard any complaints about it.

The only gotcha is that it *does* use the sound jacks to do the conversion to/from RJ-11 plus a USB port for power only (no data). The result is that you can use any standard phone and do not have to use an analog headset or buy a much more expensive ethernet-to-RJ-11 converter.

Re:Opensource alternatives?

[Qwavel]

In this case I'm more interested in open protocol alternatives. That would allow multiple clients (including open source ones) to compete.

Skype is not all bad - they do provide a Linux client - but the proprietary protocol is a big problem.

Re:Opensource alternatives?

[d3nali]

Skype, being owned by a private company, seems to be headed down the road of trying to lock in as many people as possible. All well and good, but the standard is closed (as you said) and the current Skype CEO is also the co-founder of Kazaa, Niklas Zennstr. He obviously has no qualms will malware or spyware since he ok'd the company that bought Kazaa from him ( now a notorious spyware bomb) to come bundled with Skype sometime around Nov of 2004.

This will hurt VOIP in the long run because it will sap any open standard implementations and will, if it takes off, determine the standard instead of following an open one.

Re:BroadVoice

[LakeSolon]

I just setup an Asterisk PBX box (Fedora) and got myself a Broadvoice account with a local phone number. Where as Skype uses a proprietary protocol, even most SIP based providers don't allow you to use anything but their 'locked' phone/adapters. Broadvoice happily suggests you 'bring your own device', and plays nice with Asterisk.

I just put together a little python script running against Asterisk through AGI (Asterisk's CGI) which pulls weather data from NOAA's site based on a zip code you enter, and speaks it to you. I can call it from any telephone through broadvoice.

~Blake

OSS not only matches but betters Skype

[mamladm]

Agreed, Skype aim to lure us into lock-in with their "free lunch". Their closed and proprietary ways are reason for concern.

Yet there is nothing Skype does that OSS doesn't match or beat.

Ease of use? Take a look at the Firefly softphone which supports both SIP and IAX2. It's just as easy as Skype.

P2P? Take a look at E164.org or DUNDi. Those don't require an organisation that finally calls the shots and can hold us all for ransom one day.

NAT Traversal? Skype's protocol has to use the very same bad hacks SIP needs to do NAT traversal. Not really a big surprise because it's a derivative of SIP. Take a look at IAX. This is a protocol that is NAT friendly by design. It doesn't need work arounds to travers NATs or firwalls and it's open source.

Codec? Skype use the ILBC codec which is widely available in other proprietary and OSS solutions. Then again, take a look at Speex. It's at least as good as ILBC if not better and it's open source.

Then look at interconnects and you'll find that Skype is not such a nice netizen as they try to have us believe. For example, can you call a Vonage subscriber from Skype? Can you call a Skype user from Vonage? Replace Vonage with a variety of other VOIP networks and ask the same questions again. You will find that there are no interconnects. Skype want it all.

Take a look at FWD. You can call a whole bunch of subscribers of other VOIP networks and vice versa. Many VOIP networks, commercial or not, have interconnects with each other. Skype don't.

Besides, their gateway service to POTS is pretty bad. Most other VOIP services deliver much better quality.