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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."
Why on earth would they support collecting/importing contacts from Opera but not Mozilla/Thunderbird?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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.
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
It will be interesting to see how they will deal with each national telecom regulations.
"..Skype quietly released..."
Oh well...
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.
Skype is one of the few who is aiming to provide this kind of service and actually being able to pull it off. It's simple to use and to setup, and it "simply works" as they say. Open-source supporters may be quick to wave it off since Skype are using their own closed standards. But the fact remain, no open source alternative has yet been adopted by any company who will provide this kind of service. Sure , skype isn't perfect. Their 6 month credit limit (before they eat your paid money) is questionable. But most people will be able to use those 25 euro within 6 months calling worldwide. The phone-companies are still living in the eighties where they will do anything to stall the process where communication will be cheaper. In my own country (sweden) we have Telia, which was unwilling to provide low-cost internet-access for very long time. Now they are slowly adopting to VoIP and the new trends. Flatrate is becoming more common (not with cellphone networks yet though) and people realise there are alternatives to having to pay high phonebills even for cellphone. I cant wait for the new Motorola cellphone which makes it possible to call through VoIP in wireless-lan connected areas and use GSM in other areas. :)
Looks like it'll cost 30 for a year to get a number. That's crap, there are much better deals about (for UK numbers at least) such as sipgate (completely free to recieve calls!) and babble (£10 for a permenant number I believe).
The article incorrectly states that SkypeIn is available in "China & Hong Kong". It's only available in Hong Kong, not mainland China.
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.
I live in the UK and have family in the US. I now have a US based SkypeIn #, unfortuately not in the state in which my family live. I pay the (15% VAT inclusive) 11.50 euro for three months, they pay for calls to my US number. I also use SkypeOut to call them at 1.7 eurocents/minute.
:)
To quote from Skype's own help pages "The SkypeIn number is a regular phone number so any charges that might regularly occur from calling a number in that location still apply."
So, no premium calling, no extension number , mo hassle
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.
I'm a fairly big Linux person.
I run nothing but Linux on my desktops, and I purchased a Powerbook about 6 months ago.
I know my way around computers. I can take them apart, put them together.
I've futzed with non-supported and almost supported hardware for a long time.
I'll be damned if I can get a SIP solution that will work anywhere near as well as Skype.
I want it on my Mac.
I want it on Linux.
I want it to traverse NATs with (at best) minimal setup that I can describe to someone over the phone.
I want it on Windows. And I want the Windows version to talk to the other versions.
I'd prefer an easy install (no mucking around with text config files), so that I can point other people at a download, and have them install.
I've even tried to come up with some kind of similar solution myself, create a package my friends/family could download, but it just isn't possible to do with the current 'open' solution.
So I point them at Skype. They can download it, and install it with no problem.
The ONLY time they ever have problems is when they forget to plugin the microphone, or plug it in to the wrong port.
These are not stupid people. These are well eductated, and generally economically succesful.
But they only have a modicum of computer knowledge, and when push comes to shove, they can get Skype working.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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
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.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Get yourself that Sipura and sign up with FWD, it's free, no lock-in and it's based on open standards.
http://www.freeworlddialup.com
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
This is a real breakthru. Not just for Skype users, but for everone - and most importantly, for SIP users. Because until now, Skype was a noninteroperable, proprietary "standard" protocol. Now that any phone can connect to a Skype phone, either in or out, it makes no difference that the protocols are different - they interoperate. Sure, SIP server APIs might be more open, so call control and a galaxy of new features - some perhaps useful only to a tiny nice of users distributed around the Net - will be more available to SIP users than to Skype users. But that means SIP and Skype can compete on features, rather than just price. Which will force not only Skype to open their API more to compete better, but also SIP companies with closed APIs/ports, which will need to compete with Skype. Writing to two server APIs will be frustrating, but better than nothing - and the extra market competition benefits will likely be worth it. Skype had been a troublesome island, out of reach to developers, splitting the VoIP platform too much at its early stage of development. But now it's joined the party, and we can all connect.
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make install -not war