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<br><div><div>On 3 Jul 2008, at 18:45, Forrest Sheng Bao wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Well, I happen to have a bunch of friends which are not tech geeks, as well as my family members. They can follow instructions to use Skype without bothering me.</blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>This is the same open/closed problem that exists with many protocols. I find it inconvenient chatting to people on the MSN or Yahoo! messenger networks, and later Word documents feature password protection which may render them difficult to read in other word-processors. </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><blockquote type="cite">Plus, I am using SkypeIn/SkypeOut plan. I don't have a cell phone. So I hope I can continue using it on my new handset.</blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Well, if you have a new Openmoko handset one would expect you to get a cell phone plan.</div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font><blockquote type="cite">PS: If you wanna call a traditional telephone from a VoIP client, there must be a company providing the service to bridging Internet and telephony network, right? Do you have such open source solutions? I think the company need to pay money to telephony service operator. Who will pay it?<br></blockquote><br></div><div>This is basically the same as the SkypeOut plan you mention. You pay for that, right? The difference is that, using a standard SIP client, you have a choice of multiple providers (who may offer competing rates and quality of service) and you may run the telephony-out on your own landline.</div><div><br></div><div>Skype is great for individuals - if we ignore the Freedom element of the software & service - but SIP allows you much more flexibility. Sure, there would appear to be fewer people using standard SIP (although here in the UK many broadband suppliers offer discount / free phone plans which involve connecting a standard telephone handset to a DSL router which has a telephone socket and runs SIP software) but you can certainly make free internet calls with it. Not only that, but you can enable multiple clients to do so at one location, transfer calls cleverly between them, do call-forwarding, and if they need to phone out to the conventional telephony network then one billing account can be used for multiple users (presumably giving cost savings).</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Geeks like SIP because they can run it on their own Linux server or choose to rent hosting. They can run clients on their PCs, on Macs on under Linux, on any mobile handset they like. We can rent multiple phone numbers - with non-geographic area codes (0845 or freephone), or with area codes in London or Los Angeles - and then do what the heck we like with those calls. We can answer them at the telephone on our desk or with software on our laptops; we can route them to different destinations depending on the time of day and allocate different extensions to different desks in the office. Outgoing calls can be routed by different providers depending upon costs - SIP can be used to link branch offices with free internet calls (multiple calls simultaneously) and calls outside the office can go through an ISDN bank, if you prefer that to paying someone else for point-of-presence on the POTS network.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>If you have friends who use Skype there's not much you can do about it - evangelising SIP is about effective as telling them to use Linux instead of Windows - but outside of the free calls there are VERY many advantages to open protocols.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Stroller.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></body></html>