Why Skype for Asterisk is more important than Skype for SIP

Back in September of 2008 and now today, Skype has announced initiatives to open the Skype network to SIP users. These two solutions; Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP are very different and offer significantly different capabilities. Just to recap the details.
 
Skype for Asterisk, which is still in closed beta, is a true Asterisk channel driver. This allows Asterisk based solutions to make, receive and transfer Skype calls. A significant capability of the SFA solution is its support for terminating a call to a Skype user name, for example a PC based user of the Skype client.

Skype for SIP is a very different animal. This service provides VOIP trunk support for existing SIP based PBX systems, which may include Asterisk. Unlike SFA where calls may be place to any Skype user, SFS calls may only be terminated to PSTN end points.

So what does this all mean to the Voice/Telco 2.0 marketplace. Overall Skype is beginning to leverage their extensive VOIP network to compete in the VOIP origination and termination marketplaces. Both of these services would enable a SIP based PBX user to utilize Skype as their transport vendor. For example, a traditional SIP PBX customers would directly use SFS for call termination and would provision Skype in numbers to provide origination.

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Posted by Dal on March 27, 2009 03:18 PM |
Posted to Asterisk News

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