Skype is presently embroiled in a legal battle that may force the popular service to shut down. Details may be found at http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/shock-threat-to-shut-skype-20090731-e3qe.html. If Skype goes away, will more than 40 million active daily users around the world be left without service?
Not really. In fact, there are a number of similar services already in operation and many of them work as well as, or even better than, Skype.
Skype has a dozen or so small competitors, most of them are companies you never heard of. I use both Skype and Gizmo5, a competitor to Skype that offers a better service (in my opinion) and has almost identical pricing. Calls from a Gizmo5 user to another Gizmo5 user anywhere in the world are always free of charge, the same as calls from one Skype user to another Skype user.
Gizmo5 also offers additional optional services that allow the user to call regular telephones or to receive calls from regular telephones for very modest fees. For instance, calls from the United States to England or Australia cost two cents a minute. Skype has similar pricing.
Unlike Skype, Gizmo5 works on the industry-standard SIP protocol. Skype uses its own proprietary protocol which is part of the reason there is a legal battle right now. To the casual user who is calling from a computer, the choice of protocol is probably irrelevant. However, for anyone who wants to integrate one of these services into a regular telephone system, the choice of SIP protocol is important. Unlike Skype, Gizmo5 works with Asterisk-based PBX systems (see http://www.asterisk.org) and most other VoIP-based systems.
I use Gizmo5 with a standard VoIP Grandstream GXP-2000 telephone (pictured above, also see http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/GXP-2000) office phone that I purchased a couple of years ago. The audio quality is usually superb. I do not need to leave my computer running all the time and do not use a headset to talk on the phone. My phone looks like most any standard office phone. When it rings, I pick up the handset and say "Hello," the same as any regular phone.
If you want to reach me, my Gizmo5 number is 1-747-635-1836. That number only works fom Gizmo5 systems, you cannot reach that from a regular telephone.
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