Hi, John Beardmore wrote: > By contrast, you can make skype to skype calls trivially. OK, skype > does not use open standard protocols, but the service is free, and works > well. There are various fees to dial out into telecoms networks from > skype, but even then, these can be good value if you make a lot of > international calls.
Just to add on that, SIP, which is the main open standard for VoIP, is very similar in this regard: SIP-to-SIP calls are free as well, and the fees for calls to landlines are good value for making international calls. The big difference is that there's a number of different software clients that support SIP across different platforms, and there are a number of different companies providing the interface to landlines and often free access to the SIP network itself (that is, for SIP-to-SIP calls). I'm not sure there's a (good) SIP/Skype interface available though. That said, this is probably really off-topic here :) Robert Kaiser
