At this point, every modern web browser on every device can connect a voice call nearly directly (modulo finding a TURN or other NAT-traversal solution) to every other. The problem is directory services.
There are various solutions for that, but I believe they are all either fundamentally biased towards telco profit-making (hence undesirable to everyone else) or offer no good reason for telcos to interoperate (thus preventing a smooth transition).
It’s not just directory services, it’s interoperability of identifiers. POTS remains the lowest common denominator for an identifiers that you can post somewhere and guarantee that people can connect to you. If you’re a bigger company then you can provide a web calling thing that connects to your call enter but that’s hard for a small business.
I had a Nokia N80 and used its built-in SIP support for years. When I got an Android phone, I found I needed to install an app to use it, but eventually my mobile provider reduced prices enough that it was actually more expensive to use SIPGate than to make a normal phone call. The only exceptions were calling family abroad and Signal was better there (SIPGate’s call quality was not great). It’s nice to see that it still works though. For work things I often place POTS calls from Teams, but that isn’t using a standard protocol (though the lack of security in SIP makes me sad that it is the standard)l
At this point, every modern web browser on every device can connect a voice call nearly directly (modulo finding a TURN or other NAT-traversal solution) to every other. The problem is directory services.
There are various solutions for that, but I believe they are all either fundamentally biased towards telco profit-making (hence undesirable to everyone else) or offer no good reason for telcos to interoperate (thus preventing a smooth transition).
It’s not just directory services, it’s interoperability of identifiers. POTS remains the lowest common denominator for an identifiers that you can post somewhere and guarantee that people can connect to you. If you’re a bigger company then you can provide a web calling thing that connects to your call enter but that’s hard for a small business.
I had a Nokia N80 and used its built-in SIP support for years. When I got an Android phone, I found I needed to install an app to use it, but eventually my mobile provider reduced prices enough that it was actually more expensive to use SIPGate than to make a normal phone call. The only exceptions were calling family abroad and Signal was better there (SIPGate’s call quality was not great). It’s nice to see that it still works though. For work things I often place POTS calls from Teams, but that isn’t using a standard protocol (though the lack of security in SIP makes me sad that it is the standard)l