Skype pulls about-face, calls for interoperability

Skype in the office?

"now [Skype] desperately needs to get PBX vendors on board if it's going to find a home in the office."

Not half as much as it needs to sort out the horrible transatlantic boomerang delays in its UK->UK Skype->landline calls, or the echo that often plagues UK->Hong Kong Skype->Skype calls, for instance.

We use Skype as a tool to reduce (or eliminate) overseas calling costs, and tolerate its foibles for the cost-benefits, but it's currently unusable, or at least fundamentally unreliable, if we want to use Skype to call UK landlines.

Keeping the Linux client up-to-date and bug-fixed would help a lot too, and give us the opportunity to integrate it into products that could make them a bundle of money. Hey ho.

Proprietary keeps me away from it..

Skype's lack of support for SIP means i won't even consider it...

If i use SIP, then i have the choice of many providers, some of which are cheaper than skype and don't suffer from the delays someone else posted about, and i can switch providers at the drop of a hat...

I can also setup an asterisk box that talks to the sip providers, and automatically routes to the cheapest provider... And i have a choice of literally hundreds of different sip handsets.