SIPphone, Inc. and GizmoProject.com (alternative to Skype?)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein () cox net>
Date: September 13, 2005 1:07:18 PM EDT
To: "David Farber [IP]" <dave () farber net>
Subject: SIPphone, Inc. and GizmoProject.com (alternative to Skype?)


Dave,

The quality of my Skype calls seems to have degraded in the last  
month or so, and I am not totally unconcerned about Skype's becoming  
an arm of eBay.  Then, yesterday, I came across this Engadget  
interview with SIPphone CEO Michael Robertson.  I immediately secured  
a Gizmo Project (the computer software voice calling part) account at  
http://www.gizmoproject.com/ .  The user interface is much like  
Skype's.  Accessories for phone adapters, etc. and account purchase  
for dial-out/in using the PSTN can be accessed at http://sipphone.com/.


The full interview is worth reading, but I have excerpted a few  
snippets below.


http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000070058415

Excerpts:

The Engadget Interview: Michael Robertson, CEO of SIPphone
Posted Sep 12, 2005, 2:23 PM ET by Peter Rojas
Related entries: Interviews, Misc. Gadgets
For this week's Engadget Interview, veteran journalist J.D. Lasica  
spoke with SIPphone Inc. CEO Michael Robertson about his startup  
company's battle against Skype (which was purchased by eBay earlier  
today), the Gizmo Project, open standards, and the coming era of  
always-on, always-connected voice communication.

Let's start with a quick backgrounder on SIPphone.


SIPphone was started two years ago in San Diego. The goal was to  
bring Voice Over IP to the mass market. But more than VoIP, the goal  
was to emphasize SIP, which is an open standards signaling protocol.  
The goal was to push voice to be more like email and less like  
instant messaging. With email, you have an email address and you can  
email anyone in the world and they can email you back. Contrast that  
with IM, where if you're on MSN I can't instant-message you because  
you're on Yahoo or someone's on AOL.

At SIPphone we do several things. We run a directory, what people in  
IP land call a proxy server. This is the server that connects two  
people. We help SIP hardware manufacturers - these are routers,  
adapters, and even wi-fi SIPphones. When you buy one of those devices  
and you plug it in, it has to connect to a directory so it can  
connect calls and give you a dial phone, so we work with them to make  
those auto-configure.

And very recently we released software that uses our directory called  
Gizmo Project. That's in Mac, Windows, and we just added Linux last  
week.

. . .

Skype just turned 2 this week, and it has 50 million customers, so  
why would someone choose Gizmo Project instead?

Two big reasons. One, Gizmo Project is open standards based. We'll  
interact with everyone in the world. With Skype, you can connect only  
with others who use Skype, and that's not a world that I want. I  
don't want the world to go like IM, where MSN and Yahoo have their  
little protected silo of users. I want a world where anyone can call  
anyone else. Because they're proprietary, there's no WiFi Skype phone  
today. There's a WiFi SIPphone. So you're beginning to see the world  
get behind SIP, much as they did with MP3. There wasn't just one  
company innovating. So people have to decide, do you want a closed  
world or one that interoperates with everyone else?

Now, there are some feature differences between Skype and Gizmo  
Project. On the plus side for Skype, they have instant messaging, and  
we won't be putting out our beta version for another week or two.  
What we do have is call record, which is great for podcasting. We  
have unlimited conference calling, free voice mail, call mapping,  
sound blasts, which is the ability to send sound. So there are a lot  
of features where we trump Skype. But there's something fundamental  
behind the scenes that makes us different.

One of the things Skype does, which I think is petty sneaky, is to  
use your computer to route other people's telephone calls. They could  
be using your processor and your bandwidth as a supernode to move  
other people's calls, and that's something that we don't do. We have  
servers and data centers around the world that relay calls, and we  
never use your computer for other than your own call. So I think this  
has made Skype fairly unpopular with enterprises that guard their  
network resources, and some users have noticed real slowdowns because  
their computer moves calls for other people. You can't turn it off, too.

Interesting. I have Skype and I wonder if that's why I sometimes have  
a sluggish connection.

If you open up your Windows task manager, you'll see the CPU taken  
really zoom up, and that could be because you're routing other  
people's calls. It happens most often if you have a static IP address.

How does your network's voice quality compare with Skype?

We're both using the GIPS [Global IP Sound] technology - Google  
licenses it too - and it's a very sophisticated technology that  
handles network jitter and sees how much bandwidth you're using and  
adjusts it if you're on dial-up, for example. So the call quality is  
going to be comparable between the two.
The one advantage we may have is that you don't have a third party  
you're relying on to route your calls, like Skype does. We've  
deployed routers and data centers around the world: Hong Kong,  
France, San Jose. So we might have a small call quality advantage  
because we operate these supernodes. But honestly, the call quality  
will be pretty much the same.


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