Teleo costs $29.70 per six months ($4.95 per month). This includes unlimited voicemail, call forwarding, conferencing, and an inbound phone number that can be called from regular phones. PC-to-PC calls to and from other Teleo users world wide are free. Calls to and from regular phones are charged using PSTN minutes at the lowest rates around (see rate tables). Teleo activation includes $5.00 of PSTN minutes. Teleo

How was the testing experience? Once installed (I had some issues which may or maynot have been attributed to Teleo) it activates in an easy fashion. I began testing with Bill Campbell, we tested Teleo to Teleo, Teleo to SIP (Vonage) Teleo to PSTN. After I resolved my install problems the quality became very good. I'll have to do more testing before I'm certain. I'm leaving it online for now. I did find that rejecting an incoming call... just resulted in it continuing to ring. Thus I'm in the directory if you want to test it. When you only have one friend these systems are less friendly. I expected everything to have a right click (am so Skype trained) I missed it. The biggest miss of all was no text / chat system. That simple means that Teleo can't replace my IM system and thus for me it is just another PoIP solution only required for the number and the voicemail forwarding to my cellphone.

What Teleo needs to do to beat Skype.
They currently have SkypeIn like capability for the US must begin to offer global numbers. Their account system is neat maybe they could be better if they have the capability to do global credit cards etc. Teleo needs to add both chat and video functionality. Without them it's dead when Skype adds SkypeIn. I'm looking at it as a temporary way to dump my Vonage line. At the moment it's another smart PoIP play. It's most likely to hurt Vonage and similar competitors. It won't do any damage to Skype. Some other difference are clear in the search function. Skype's profile offers more infomation than Teleo's. Ultimately it's an important difference. There is also no way to block unwanted callers. There was no approval function when I added my first friend. Status is limited to online and offline. Thus "presence" isn't understood or managed here. Teleo is developing a voice mail component. By contrast Skype is adding voice messaging. They are fundamentally different. Net net it clones the voice and adds a number and will find that doesn't equal a Skype beater.

What are we learning?

The current charge for a "line" --- your own VoIP number is going to cost you almost $5 per month. This is also consistent with Jeff Pulver's LibreTel Offering.

Charges above two cents per minute are now daylight robbery.

VoIP providers like Teleo are all going to call-forward to your cellphone. Thus mobile operators better VoIP offer our mobile numbers. That's worth $5.00 per month. Otherwise it is just revenue lost.

Teleo has focused on providing a service for laptop road warriers. Still there is no reason why they can't also offer a SIP ATA box and enable us to replace that Vonage adapter with one that is tranferable later and rings a standard phone too. Just needs a few instructions on the website.

I'm still waiting for Teleo or Skype to make it easy to run more than one profile at the same time. I'm sure I can run two Teleo profiles, it's just not convenient.

Prepaid minutes are the way forward. At two cents per minute Vonage's plan equal $25-5=20 @2cents... or 1000 minutes per month. Their 500 minute plan the same. Just another note to self. Vonage is way overpriced now for what I use it for.

SkypeVM will provide an advantage in the "lite version offering when it comes time for Skype to price their premium services. Skype potential service charges are "obvious" now in my book.

SIP's Final Gasp?
As I look at Teleo I can see there is a lot right. It seems to work, it ties to SIP addresses, captures e-mails etc. And still I can't help wondering. It comes 18 months after Skype's launch, their product plan has been spelled out for over a year and relative to Skype it is functionally crippled. The no chat/text feature blows my mind. This may be their design, however I'm guessing it is more to do with integrating Chat into their SIP solution. SIP SIMPLE is available. Xten in EYEBEAM has managed it. Presence is the future.