sipgate

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sipgate is a Voice over IP service provider based in Germany and also operating in Austria and the United Kingdom. Their service offers free calls to other IP phones, chargeable calls to landlines and mobiles and free geographical and non-geographical incoming phone numbers^[1]. Users may use either a software SIP client on their computer, a hardware IP phone, or a Software PBX such as Asterisk with the service. IP phones and other associated hardware can be purchased through sipgate's online store^[2], which sells hardware by manufacturers including Grandstream and UTStarcom.

Besides VOIP, In January 2006 Sipgate began providing their customers with the ability to send SMS text messages through their website. Users can even set the phone number of the sender to be that of their mobile phone. Sipgate now also offers a feature called "Webfax", which gives users the opportunity to send faxes via the Sipgate website. A user can upload a .pdf file or type the text into an editor provided on the website. Certain plans also include an extension so that the user can receive incoming fax messages. Such messages can be downloaded by the user, or emailed to him as a .pdf file. This alleviates the need for a hardware fax, which can encounter problems when sending and receiving over VOIP because of the nature of the codecs used with VOIP.

Sipgate allows incoming calls from some other partner VoIP providers, e.g. freenet iPhone, FreeWorldDialup, IAXtel and others. But they block the use of their service through some web-based PBXes^[3].