What do people think when VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is mentioned? Many think of MagicJack, Vonage, and Skype and rightly so. Out of these 3 major companies, only Skype has the popularity of 480 million people and the ability to do video conferencing. Due to a problem with license agreements with Joltid, the company that created the P2P (peer to peer) protocol which Skype uses, Skype may have come to the end of its line. eBay, Skype’s owner doesn’t have time to implement it’s own P2P protocol in which it would be compatible with all versions of Skype. With Joltid accusing eBay of patent infringement, it is unlikely that eBay will be able to reach an agreement for licensing Joltid’s technology until the infringement issue is first resolved. Just be prepared, Skype may just disappear….

Should this happen, what are alternatives out there? AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), and Microsoft Network Messenger (MSN) are alternatives that allow you to do voice, text, and video chat. However it does not have the ability for multiple video chats. For that, you need to consider Oovoo, which can also handle calls to land lines as well. If you don’t care about video or even text chat, then stay tuned for our upcoming guide over VoIP in which you’ll learn how to make free calls to people – as long as the receiver of the call happens to be on a computer.

Technorati Tags: Skype, VoIP, Oovoo, Tjchan, Just Another Mobile Monday, JAMM