[Asterisk-Users] Is SKYPE a threat or should we dosomething(together)

[Kerry Garrison]

 Certainly, if that is something you want to accomplish. Personally, I have
no interest in it as it does not suite the business requirements of my
clients. They are far more comfortable taking along a small ATA and regular
phone than having to have their laptops booted up to make phone calls. While
there is definitly a market for that level of cross-communication its not
for anyone. What about Teleo? Awesome sound quality!, what about MSN
Messenger, its available on every Windows based system? There are those
cases when you want to bridge a consumer product and times when you don't.
The ease of getting Asterisk up and running, especially with the @Home
package makes it compelling to a huge, very diverse group of people. Under
the hood however, its is a full blown, business class PBX system. How many
phone guys have been asked by their clients if their Toshiba PBX can talk to
Skype? Well before you see the ability for Skype to talk directly to
Asterisk, you will see major services begin to offer bridges to each other.
Take FreeWorldDialup for example, they are putting in their Vonage and
Packet8 bridges now. Down the road you may well see Skype and Teleo bridges,
perhaps Broadvoice etc. Add to that DNS based phone numbers (or competing
technologies) and before too long a Skype user can call an Asterisk box
simply by bridging the networks. This is far more likely to happen short
term then a skype-compliant codec for Asterisk.
-Kerry


-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Remco Barende
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 2:34 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Is SKYPE a threat or should we
dosomething(together)

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Kerry Garrison wrote:

> Skype is to Asterisk as Instant Messaging is to e-mail. Is e-mail 
> dead? Is IM a threat? Asterisk is a full featured PBX system, how does 
> this relate to a P2P messaging system? How many businesses will be 
> dropping their current phone service and having Skype accounts on 
> every desk? I am thinking......probably none.

But for a company with an * PBX that would be able to receive skype calls or
even to have an extension connected to a skype account would be a wonderful
addition. It would connect the business world to the home users

Too bad a reverse engineered version of the protocol isn't available yet for
*

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