After a few disappointing months with Skype, I decided to try SIP based VOIP. The difference is quite incredible. I bought myself a proper VOIP handset - a Grandstream GXP 2000 and signed up with http://www.voip.co.uk/ and SIPGate.

Both allow me to have proper telephone numbers and even better Perth ones too for just signing up, although voip.co.uk does take your credit card number.

The sound quality of the calls is on par with that of a standard BT voice call or slightly better but the stability of the calls is way better than that of Skype. There's no jitter and delay and it just seems so much more polished.

Another advantage of SIP is that you don't need the PC turned on all the time because the handset plugs into an ethernet port on the switch.

The disadvantages are that for the SIP/VOIP newbies the terminology is pretty opaque and it took me a while to work out why I couldn't receive inbound calls and this is why Skype is a more attractive proposition than SIP/VOIP. There's a UK news group for the technology - uk.telecom.voip - but having lurked on it for a while and posted one message, you are presumed to have a grounding in the workings of SIP/VOIP if you're looking for help. The knowledge on how to get this stuff up and running is pretty technically in-depth and somewhat scattered. It's not really boiled down enough for your average Joe Schmoe who really wants to sign up with a provider and plug in his phone and start making/receiving calls. At the end of the day I don't really care what vocoder to use or what RTP, STUN or SIP/SDP message are, just tell me what I need to get the phone working.

That said, once you overcome the technical hurdles, it's pretty neat.