In a true demonstration of how ridiculous lawsuits can be, we recently discovered that BSkyB, the company which provides Sky satellite television for customers in the UK, has been suing Skype for over five years.  Their lawsuit is based around the fact that “Sky” is in “Skype” and they both have blue logos, which they believe may confuse consumers.  The lawsuit was launched in response to Skype’s attempt to claim trademarks that...

A few weeks ago, some of the developers from well known FreePBX, another open source VoIP phone system, have launched a brand new venture aiming to position VoIP more prominently into the open source sphere.  If you’re capable of installing your own software onto your PBX system, it looks like you’ll be able to get it for absolutely nothing, with some handy applications and libraries on top. Open source projects are the tech world’s...

It’s been a good few weeks for Android and Blackberry users of Google Voice.  Google recently announced some speed improvements to the Google Voice apps for these phones, based on the way that Google connects you to the network each time. Formerly, Google had to send a call to their server each and every time a user placed a call.  This would find the call’s Google Voice access number, which necessarily took a short amount of time. ...

On the surface, Skype looks like a consumer application.  It enables us to make free calls to other PCs and cheap calls to normal phones the world over.  But it doesn’t come with any hardware and the troubleshooting is not always the best it could be – certainly not the same as a dedicated, local team would be able to provide with on-the-spot service.  Yet to our surprise, small businesses are beginning to use Skype for...

We often wonder why the whole world isn’t using VoIP.  It’s not only cheaper but it can do almost anything better than a traditional phone system.  It has more features and more options, both paid and free.  It’s clear that something must be affecting the consumer adoption rate.  So what are the current barriers to worldwide VoIP adoption and how can we surmount them? Competition with the telecoms industry. This is a fairly...

When it comes to choosing a VoIP app for smartphones, we’re almost spoilt for choice.  A number of services have popped up offering cheap calls at low rates through third party apps.  Some of them let you make calls over wi-fi while others use 3G technology to make calls possible when you’re out and about.  If your plan offers few minutes but has unlimited internet access, these three apps may make up the difference. For Apple users,...

Last month, Skype released SkypeKit, which is essentially made up of the elements in the Skype program for Windows.  This will allow Skype to be installed on any system, though it is at present only available to a limited number of beta partners, but other developers can apply for the program in a month’s time or request a beta invite from the site. Recently, we reported that Skype’s CEO envisioned the program’s installation on each...