Skype under Fedora-10

[Kevin Kofler]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Yes, no one can call me from their phone unles... wait, they can call me
> from their phone. Any phone. Skype no more forces other to use it than ham
> radio or Twitter, it's an additional channel to reach me, not in any way
> exclusive.

"Use proprietary software or pay up", <SARCASM>very clever</SARCASM>...
(Plus, you also get to pay for the incoming phonecall, so this attitude is
also counterproductive for you.)

> So you are proposing some nameless service people can't evaluate
> independently as an alternative. Call that a "closed source"
> recommendation, you know a provider who isn't like the one's people have
> complained about previously, but you don't tell us who so we could check
> it out.

I haven't evaluated any of those providers myself. If you check the Ekiga
dialogs, you'll find a link to one such provider (diamondcard.us, which
uses an affiliate system similar to Amazon, so if you register through the
link in the Ekiga software, referral money goes to the Ekiga project), but
I haven't used it, so I don't know if it's any better or worse than the
alternatives. (Ekiga's interface only mentions PC->phone, but if you look
at the service's price list, you'll also see a service listed called "DID"
which is for incoming calls, you can get a phone number and have it
forwarded to SIP (i.e. phone->PC) that way.)

Another service I know about is WengoPhone, but unfortunately that's mostly
dead, so I'm not sure whether their paid services are still available. And
I have never tried it either.

The Ekiga project says at
http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Calling#Using_Ekiga_to_do_PC-to-phone_calls :
"Ekiga can be used with several Internet Telephony Service Providers. Those
providers will allow calling real phones from your computer using Ekiga at
interesting rates. There is no obligation for you to use the default
provider, but we recommand it."

So I'm sorry I can't really help you make a decision there. You have to ask
somebody who knows more about those services, or find some reviews.

        Kevin Kofler