Hop 255

Grand Central

Grand Central provides a single number for managing telephone traffic. Techcrunch say accounts created are free for 60 days and cost $25 for 1000 minutes or $15 per month for unlimited use. There will also apparently be a free, 100 minute per month option indefinitely.Presumably unlimited is cheaper than 1000 minutes because that is a monthly fee. Interesting a service like this can only work in mobile party pays countries such as the US or Canada because of low mobile termination.  In Europe they would have to charge per call as it appears to be essentially a call forwarding service.

Hutchison 3's Net Access

Hutchison's 3 prices seem fairly good for the Internet access option and will provide the first crack in the international roaming market in 2007 (in terms of skype to skype calls).  The £10 option includes the slingbox capability. They also bundle a half priced slingbox. The definition of unlimited data is here and there are caps for various services seem fair (e.g. 80 hours per month for slingbox, 5000 minutes for Skype) and routine surfing to websites aimed at mobile users would incur less than 1Gb per month.  It appears that users can't use skype-out as it specifies skype to skype calls.

Some websites are blocked (but they don't say which ones).  They do say the user can't access adult content but not clear if they block them or actually look at traffic. Users can't bypass international roaming charges for the moment when using skype to skype service (though presumably other services provide text bypass for emails, instant messaging etc). They can however do that from January 2007 when roaming on 3's other networks. This could make it a real winner for users roaming in those countries.  Looks like you can access slingox (and your PC via Orb) when roaming on international video grade networks. All in all a big step forward for mobile users.

Second Life Virtual Mobile Phones

Second life users can now avail themselves of virtual phones thanks to younevercall.

Jangl

Jangl provides an ID that users can give out to other people to create a VoIP number that is disposable or continues to act as a unique bridge between two phones. The user's own number remains anonymous.

Freebuzz

Freebuzz enables customers of Free, the Iliad owned French broadband provider, to make calls from one country to another via their Freebox at Free's rates. A call from Australia to a mobile in the United States would cost nothing as both calls are included in Free's monthly charge.

combots

Combots gets a write-up at Techcrunch today. Cute graphics but the FAQ says users have a 200 MB limit on file transfer which will be a limit for some. No privacy policy except for some marketing double speak. Hop255 prefers Allpeers  -- in their words "Share 100KB, 100MB, 100GB, it does not matter!" and they do have a privacy policy.

Skype Interconnection

A possible reverse engineering of Skype written up here.

Wengo

Wengo, is a French VoIP provider, using open software. This might be an advantage for the future if Wendi Whitmore, from the US Airforce, is correct on trends in botnets.

Voipcheap

Voipcheap is a new player in the VoIP market offering free calls to fixed lines in many countries. The only catch seems to be spending a minimum amount of metered calls (e.g to mobile etc) every 90 days. But it is hard to find the minimum charge on their website. If is not set too high it shouldn't be difficult to spend the minimum amount in that time period.

The fine print says:

"Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded, a minimal rate of 1ct/min will be charged (as shown in the VoipCheap software)."

With VoipCheap, users can also get your own, regular phone number - for FREE.  They can therefore receive a call via VoipCheap. Phone numbers are currently available in:

Czech Republic
France
Germany
Netherlands
Switzerland
United Kingdom

The service is backed by Betamax. 

Their website says: "Betamax was founded in 2005 in Germany by a group of marketing experts. Funding from private investors and venture capitalists allowed for a rapid market roll-out of a variety of products which are powered by Betamax."

Off the shelf VoIP

RTC Factory -- A VoIP in a box provider ...though an increasingly competitive market for entrants.