VoIP-Point

Sipgate, an established SIP Voice Over IP provider has announced a new software product for the Apple iPhone.

iPhone users will now be able to use a SIP application directly when connected to WiFi hotspots to make free or reduced cost calls over the internet.

This brings the iPhone in line with other WiFi enabled smartphone which have SIP functionality directly available.

Sipgate appear to be offering their free iPhone product via their USA, UK and Austrian websites although, if the software is truly SIP compliant, there shouldn’t be any geographic limitations to its use.

AVAD Technologies, a New York based company, is offering ‘hosted’ IP PBX services for businesses.

Hosted IP PBXs mean that the customer has no need to purchase and install potentially costly servers and associated hardware to run their IP PBX. The IP PBX is instead hosted by the service provider (in this case AVAD) who colocate the neccesary hardware, data connectivity and telephone lines in a data center.

An advantage of this approach is that teleworkers can communicate with the PBX at potentially higher data rates than one located behind a normal ADSL or Cable link. Further, having the PBX hosted at a major data center may improve performance features such a latency and throughput for large, distributed organisations.

Slashdot has a current discussion about which domestic router is best for Quality of Service (QOS) provision for Voice over IP.

The original question posed is by someone using a Linksys WRT54G wireless broadband router with Bittorrent and other high-bandwidth applications to consider. Unfortunately, the WRT54G isn’t quite cutting it when used alongside Vonage.

Inevitably for Slashdot, there is some gravitation toward open-source products. Open firmware for the WRT54G is suggested by some while another comment mentions that m0n0wall, an open-source firewall VPN distribution, can be deployed on relatively low-end commodity hardware and provides the type of QoS required.

I came across MagicJack via Stella Commute’s blog. MagicJack is a USB adapter for your PC which allows you to connect a regular [POTS] telephone with a normal RJ11 connector.

MagicJack charges about $20 a year and allows you to make ‘free’ long distance calls over the internet. Stella Commute is impressed with the system but Cory Doctorow for Boingboing is not.

Doctorow thinks you should read the EULA carefully before signing up for MagicJack.

Jaxtr is another new VoIP based service this time offering VoIP from your website; be that a blog, Myspace, Orkut etc.

The Jaxtr service appears to involve adding a widget to your website which then allows your website visitor to call you directly, send you a voicemail using VoIP or send an SMS to your mobile phone.

Jaxtr also offer reduced-cost distance/international calling services.