SIP versus Skype: Skype has been a great product, and is a major player in the Internet Telephony arena. We welcome and support any initiative that provides services obviously to the benefit of users, where possible we encourage cooperation and will always seek to align with equal minded parties to provide benefits to our customers. Skype has however never been an "open" party to/for anyone; their services might be "free" and thus of interest to many, and Skype definitely has mastered the commercial ability to sell their customers more than they bargained for... have you spent your bucks on pictures, downloads and gimmicks lately? ;-) Skype has always kept their technology a secret, and no information is available on how they actually communicate (this even contrary to Public Telco's). Lately gateways are emerging to link into Skype, though these are all developed on assumed information from hackers. Have you ever wondered where Skype communicates to? Well... we too! Specifically when we found that even in a clean Skype installation on one of our PC's we traced a whole range of internet addresses suddenly probing our PC while the Skype program mentions nothing about any connection!!! We feel much safer with technology that is publicly available (like VoIP and SIP), so that the community can assure that nobody peeks into... your PC and..? without you knowing. Many SIP providers are emerging and we are seeing a rapid growth of SIP based VoIP providers; which assures us to be alert and provide our customers the best services. The total number of VoIP users has always outgrown Skype and is growing even faster. The benefit of SIP/VoIP providers is that they provide you with gateways to communicate with other SIP/VoIP providers (just like national Telco's call any other Telco in the world) to allow you to call anyone anywhere. SIP/VoIP provides you true "Freedom to Talk" to anyone!