Mashable 30+ VoIP services

Mashable posts a list of the 30 (and more) VoIP services that can be considered as an alternative or a complement to Skype.
I am very happy to see Sitòfono in the list of "Phone Connecting Services".

I think that the Skype outage last week created more disappointment and negative hype than real damage to users. I guess the real damage has be inflicted to Skype credibility.
However, do not forget that all the internet based services are subject to a lot of outages that are different in nature, duration, and entity to be blamed:

• Consumer PC is behaving badly or is misconfigured => Blame the user ;-)
  
• Consumer pipe is down => Blame the service provider or the cable provider
  
• Some networks are reachable, others are not => Blame the interconnection operators or the backbone providers
• All the networks are reachable, but not the one that provides the internet-based service => Blame the service provider for not monitoring its reachability from outside
  
• (VoIP specific) The service seems working, but you cannot make a call => Blame the service provider for not checking periodically that the PSTN termination provider is up and running

Here in Abbeynet we have developed an automated testing toolkit that checks periodically the VoIP overall quality, by measuring the transmitted-received differences in a closed loop phone call.
The toolkit is based on the Abbeyphone VOW SDK, with some customization necessary to intercept the audio statistics.

Technorati Tags: cernio, voip, skype, outage, mashable, Sitofono