The PhoneBoy Blog


Simplifying Telecom, Mobile Phones, Gadgets, Health, and More!

Why get hung up on the Gizmo client?

(Disclaimer: I haven’t loaded the Gizmo Project on my computers yet because, quite frankly, I try and avoid mucking about in Windows)

Aswath blogged today that Gizmo is locked to use only SIPPhone. This is from the company that sued Vonage for locking their ATAs. Om also picked up on this. I personally don’t think this is as big of a deal as these two obviously think it is. Gizmo is basically a free softphone for SIPphone. Why is this a bad thing?

There is a fair difference between Skype, the service, and Gizmo Project, the service. Granted, the Gizmo client may be “locked to use only SIPPhone,” but who really cares so long as the underlying network isn’t? Gizmo Project, based on SIPphone, lets you use whatever device or client you’d like so long as it conforms to the SIP standards. Because SIPphone has connectivity with a lot of different SIP networks, you can also call those networks from the Gizmo client as well. You can also do cool stuff like get an IPKall number and point it to youre Gizmo client.

Contrast to Skype. The underlying Skype network is proprietary and requires you to use only the Skype client to access it.


#Cybersecurity Evangelist, Podcaster, #noagenda Producer, Frequenter of shiny metal tubes, Expressor of personal opinions, and of course, a coffee achiever.