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Google Announces Native SIP Internet Calling with Gingerbread

by Leo Zheng

Google Announces its new Android platform, Gingerbread, which includes SIP Calling capabilities.

Published: December 6, 2010

We kind of saw this coming. Today Google announced the Android 2.3 Platform, aka Gingerbread. There's lots of cool new stuff to look forward to in the coming weeks, and all of that can be found here in the Android developers' platform highlights.

Guess which part caught our eye?

Internet calling

The user can make voice calls over the internet to other users who have SIP accounts. The user can add an internet calling number (a SIP address) to any Contact and can initiate a call from Quick Contact or Dialer. To use internet calling, the user must create an account at the SIP provider of their choice — SIP accounts are not provided as part of the internet calling feature. Additionally, support for the platform's SIP and internet calling features on specific devices is determined by their manufacturers and associated carriers.

This is potentially huge, and we can't wait to try it out. What do you think this will mean for SIP? Will wireless carriers allow free Internet calling, or will they cripple SIP calling capabilities?

Click here to find out more on what is a SIP address.

Check out our follow-up to this post here: Evaluating Gingerbread SIP calling with the Nexus S

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