Two more comments on my side: yes, here in italy and in other countries in Europe Skype means VoIP.. peer to peer is a concept still far from “normal” users.. Moreover, I agree that Skype and Vonage are much different. In my industry perspective during VON 2006 I had stated that, to me, Vonage is “traditional telephony”, since the user experience is exactly the same.

In conclusion, a lot of great points came out from this discussion that potentially could go forward again and again.

For the time being, thank you very much for your contribution!

Thanks for keeping this going, and I just wanted to add a couple of things.

First – about Vonage being the Kleenex of VoIP – a term I coined a long time ago! Thanks for bringing a global perspective to my comment, but I still stand by it. When it comes to landline replacement service, the U.S. is by far the most important market for VoIP, and there’s no doubt that Vonage is synonymous with VoIP in the U.S. Skype is far more widely used, but I don’t think of them as VoIP, and I don’t think most people do in general. You say that they do, and if that’s true, I think they should stand corrected. Skype is about peer to peer, which happens to be VoIP, but it’s really an Internet application, and not a phone service. Very different businesses, and I’ve commented many times about how they’re really apples and oranges. But I’m a big fan – and user – of both!

Good points otherwise, in your post. However, I wouldn’t equate email and VoIP for benchmarks of success. Email can function very well as a free service because it’s easy to manage as an application. In its pure form, so is VoIP, but right now, providers need to find ways to make money with it, otherwise they won’t be around much longer.

Lots to talk about here, but I’ll stop now! Feel free to drop me a line to continue the discussion…

What I need from VoIP is a phone and an answering machine. Any special presence functions I don’t need.

When I don’t want to be contacted I tell my Fritz!Box FON ATA to forward all calls to voice mail. Voipstunt doesn’t even give me voicemail, but I use Sipgate’s free voicemail.

When I don’t answer a call to one of my 10 VoIP numbers then Sipgate’s voicemail answers and sends the left message as an email. When I don’t want my phone to ring I send any call directly to Sipgate’s voicemail.

I only use free VoIP services. Maybe I am the type of client that makes the old and new telcos cry.

Naked “voice” is not enough. IMHO, of course.

Are we really far from it? I am living it!

I pay about 3 dollars a month to Voipstunt for unlimited calls to Germany, where I live, the US and most important countries.

The rest is just plain internet access costs I would have paid anyway for surfing the net.