We are looking at the old tug-of-war between open standards advocates and monopoly builders, where corporations are trying to lock unwary consumers into their walled-garden, proprietary systems. PoIP, though today mostly based on the revolutionary SIP, is a good example of this, Skype is another.

What we need is a change in mindset, away from phone numbers, towards SIP URI’s. The phone number "namespace" is controlled by the phone companies, whereas domain names are for anyone to get and "own".

This will eventually crack up the retro PSTN-emulations, and unveil them as what they are, merely incremental rather then revolutionary.

What IMHO is needed are:

1) a good open source pure SIP client app, supporting voice, video and the SIP based IM standards SIMPLE + XCAP + MSRP. It should support ICE, so that NAT traversal becomes a non-issue. And of course it should be "easy to use". Of course we also need the server counterpart; iptel.org’s SER is pretty close, lacking the IM aspect AFAIK.

2) hardware clients that support URI dialing. This pretty much rules out all forms of ATAs. Ideally, a combined GSM/UMTS/WiFi phone, with 802.1x support (roaming authentication). Let’s see if the UMTS/3GPP incorporation of SIP in the IMS ever bears any fruit, other then being a closed system, used behind the scenes.

P.S. Chris Holland, congratulations, you are "getting it"

There is still room for something disruptive, but I’d argue we haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps Skype, or something like it, evolves into it.

It’s quite clear to me that Vonage and the rest of the POIP herd don’t represent it.

If the current choices and direction are all we’re going to get, well shame on us for letting it happen.

In the mobile space where I’ve been working recently, there’s a lot of talk about doing VoIP on a cell phone over 802.11 – part of the idea is to either provide a network connection at a lower cost than cellular or to provide connectivity where signal is poor (e.g. in an office park).

In the end, cellular VoIP over 802.11 is just cellular telephony that – when it works as planned – is as seamless as roaming from one cell site to another. The signal issues can also be resolved with traditional network engineering and bi-directional amplifiers. But RF isn’t IP and will never get the same type of hype in the press.

So much for the better mousetrap.

I agree .. even if I’m one of the founders of a 5 years old, really pioneer ITSP in Spain.

Sure, someone has to re-invent voice conversations in the Internet era, the rest are just copying.

Amazon doesn’t re-invent the book, just sell them online, we are just selling calls online, no more fancy.

Do we need Tim Berners II to invent another paradigm?

Meanwhile, don’t sweat, it’s little more than just call cheaper!

"So what’s been holding me from adopting Skype? Skype is a proprietary solution. Users are escaping from the prison of the POTS only to jump into the walled garden of Skype…"
http://www.noirextreme.com/node/47