[LINK] There goes the neighbourhood...

[rene]

On Wed, 11 May 2011 10:50:11 +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> The whole point with skype was:
[...]
> Another thing people miss:
[...]
> There's a lesson here..

Indeed. And I'd add there's another thing *some* people miss:

Skype (by providing an @skype address) overcomes the SIP problem/issue of 
SIP users needing a permanent/constant SIP address at which they can be 
called (given many Net users are on dynamic IP addresses[1]), and highly 
preferably a 'human readable' SIP address.

I've often wondered whether email would have ever become so popular if ISPs 
had decided: we'll provide our customers with an email address, but our 
email server will reject emails sent to them from anyone who isn't also one 
of our customers - which in relation to SIP is what most, probably all, AU 
ISPs who have SIP servers do (unless the customer is paying for a VOIP 
incoming call service and the call originated on the PSTN).

Ekiga SIP software, mentioned by Karl, on a quick look seems amazing,  
stunning even ;-), given, among other things, it apparently provides users 
with the ability to establish a free human readable SIP address via 
ekiga.net. The only other free SIP address/server facility I know of is 
iptel.org (but it's about 4 years since I looked around, so maybe, just 
maybe, there might be some others, but probably not very likely given the 
general tendency towards commercial VOIP services).

[1] and few would even know about the option of using 'no-ip' type domain 
address services.

Irene