Skypejournal mentions a hack to create a SIP address that will ring to your Skype name using the Net2Max.com service. It’s a rather tedious process, but there is a nice step-by-step write-up to get things set up.
I tried it and it does work. As the guide suggests, it might take some time for the stuff at Net2Max.com to get provisioned, but I went through all the steps (well done by the way), and at first it didn’t work, but I waited a few hours, and then it did work! By placing a call using PhoneGnome to the SIP address sip:MYNUMBER@sip.syd.net2max.com presto! I get an incoming call on my Skype client (from an odd username).
I wonder how many concurrent calls this system can handle? One would assume they’re using some kind of hack into multiple instances of Skype running on PC’s somewhere in their datacanter to bride the calls from SIP to Skype. I’d be very curious to know exactly what they’ve got there. Does anyone know?
Overall though, it is very cool. The steps are somewhat involved, but the above write-up is good, and you only have to set it up once. If you have a way to dial to a SIP address, you can skip the whole discussion of dialing a SIPbroker access number and such. Instead, simply place a SIP call directly to your Skype account at sip:NUMBER@sip.syd.net2max.com from your SIP client or SIP compatible service.
So when will Skype officially support SIPin and SIPOut? As Phoneboy notes, they say nobody wants it, but services like this suggest otherwise.
I would prefer it the other way around: that Skype rings my SIP address. So I would never have to switch on Skype again.
I have all my SIP accounts nicely consolidated to ring my phone or my cell phone. I could do the same with Google Talk, Yahoo and MSN.
Only on Skype I am nearly never reachable because I don’t like communications that force me to switch my computer on.
That’s why Skype is Oldschool to me. VoIP has left the PC world long ago and goes along with me.
I have to say I agree with Markus about being reachable via skype on my sip phones. platforms like fring an dbarablu host your skype clients on there servers and forward to your cell phone when calls come in. No one is offer a similar service that sends to any SIP URI instead a proprietary platform on a cell phone.
spg
p.s. there is one way(hack?) to do this if you are a voxeo developer(accounts are free). voxeo has inbound skype numbers pointing to every IVR application on the free hosted developer platform. these applications can forward through to a SIP URI.
I couldn’t agree more, particularly "So I would never have to switch on Skype again." Why doesn’t Skype simply offer a ‘forward to my SIP address’ option? Of course we know why. They want to keep everyone contained in their world. They say it’s because Skype users don’t want interoperability – if you are a Skype user, maybe it’s time to tell them, not me. I agree with you! 🙂
More agreement that it is skype who should be providing the routing to SIP, the industry-standard, not the other way around.
It was the skype founders who deliberately chose to take a proprietary method, and only their sales/marketing strategies that have made it adopted by so many. However, despite the numbers of skype members these pales into insignificance when compared to the number of SIP devices and services being used worldwide.