[asterisk-users] Skype For Asterisk (SFA)

[Gordon Henderson]

On Wed, 16 Nov 2011, A J Stiles wrote:

> You would be better off persuading Skype users to transition to something else.
>
> Skype is the absolute antithesis of the whole point of telephony, which is to
> connect people together.  This includes, implicitly, the ability for
> subscribers on one telecommunications provider's network to call subscribers
> on another network.  Imagine if, say, Vodafone subscribers were unable to call
> up BT subscribers?  Well, this is *exactly* what Skype are trying to create by
> keeping their protocols proprietary.
>
> Of course there remains a small but finite probability that Skype will be
> successfully reverse-engineered, the Source Code leaked, or Skype's owners
> forced to publish its communications protocols before the 2013 deadline.  But
> it would be extreme folly to bet the family farm on this happening.
>
> It's time to start seriously evaluating Asterisk-compatible alternatives to
> Skype.

Sadly, my experience in the SOHO environment is that Skype wins.

I tried to get my family to all use SIP videophones - and it worked for a 
couple of years - mostly. The downside was that they're mostly using crap 
domestic quality broadband and trying to use a videophone, or even a 
soft-phone on a PC just seemed too hard for them to grasp. They *all* 
moved to Skype recently - and I have to say I've been totally blown away 
at the ease of use and the quality of the calls - both sound and video. 
(And I'm using Linux too)

The other thing - LAN to LAN calls STAY ON THE LAN! So I can "Skype" my 
wife next door and it doesn't use up any of my own broadband bandwidth 
wheras if I use a hosted SIP service, calls go out & come back in again. 
Skype also seems to be able to run the lines at max. rate too - some sort 
of adaptive bandwidth - we get large and high resolution video calls from 
one end of the country to the other with the output bandwidth running at 
near max (800Kb sec in our case)

And now I'm seeing some of my smaller business customers using Skype. For 
serious business calls too. It's free. They get video. It "just works". No 
fiddling with NAT, port forwarding, never any hint of one-way audio.

I really was skeptical at first, but Skype is here to stay - mostly 
because it just works. Even a complete computer idiot can install it and 
make it work. Give them a SIP phone, or SIP softphone and tell them to set 
it up and they'll just leave it alone as "too complicated".

As for interoerability - well there's Skype-Out. It works, it's set at a 
reasonable price level, so what more do you need?

Once upon a time I would block Skype from working inside a corporate LAN 
and would recomend against it's use - now I'm told to explicitly allow it.

Times are changing and I'm finding it harder to persuade small businesses 
to use SIP phones - and why should they...

Gordon