Skype alternatives

A topic of conversation that often arises in Skypeland is, "What are the alternatives to Skype?" Skype is a VOIP program that can connect to the regular phone system, and that also features an online voice forum, the Skypecast.

Other VOIP programs such as Gizmo, Sunrocket, Speakeasy, Viatalk, Verizon VoiceWing, Lingo, Packet8, Zap!, Jajah, SJPhone, AT&T Callvantage, Vonage, Google talk, and those included in MSN and Yahoo! messengers do not yet have online voice forums like Skypecasts, as far as I know. There are other programs like Paltalk, oovoo, Mebeam and TalkShoe feature online voice forums, but do not yet have the same VOIP features that allow connection to the PSTN telephones (regular phone network), as far as I know. Each of these has their own advantages and disadvantages. Mebeam and oovoo allow up to 8 people to join in a video cast, but there are no lists of casts that I have found or ways to join casts that are not listed. Paltalk allows large discussion rooms, but a participant has to "raise their hand" to ask to speak and the host has to allow them to speak.

Someone in Skypeland told me that Skype would always be the best and no other program would ever beat it. I asked him why, and he had no answer. One only has to remember Quotron and Napster for previous companies that had a huge lead on the competition, but now have faded into obscurity. I heard similar things about Quotron and Napster in the past when they were dominant, and where are they now?


There are a huge number of new companies and emerging technologies that integrate telephones and the internet. For example, here is a blog entry that discusses some of these:
http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/2007/06/why-voip-im-sky.html