SIP slowly but surely....

With the proliferation of VOIP http://www.answers.com/voice%20over%20ip and the growing popularity of Asterisk http://www.asterisk.org/ as a cheap, reliable alternative to ye big olde' PBX's http://www.answers.com/pbx/ I thought I'd mention some fun stuff like:

• Asterisk@Home http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/ and the
  
• IAX http://www.answers.com/topic/iax-1&method=6/ protocol; as soon *very* cheap call rates may be achievable from your SIP http://www.answers.com/session%20initiation%20protocol enabled softphone http://www.answers.com/softphone !
• While perusing the oul' Interweb I found a company called.. Blueface http://www.blueface.ie/ just starting out in Dublin, Ireland ( though there are a few more here in Sydney, Australia offering IAX trunks as this listing shows.. ) I will keep my eyes peeled...

Note: of course we must not forget that end-to-end QOS http://www.answers.com/qos/ is still not viable between most Telco's http://www.answers.com/telcos/

( similar to the interconnectivity problems with MPLS http://www.answers.com/mpls/ in heterogenous networks... although I guess GMPLS is a start http://www.mplsrc.com/faq3.shtml#GMPLS )