you are completely losing me here. i am a grandcentral user for some time; and i just checked the website to be sure. grandcentral DOES NOT support inbound SMS!!

phoneboy. it is not there yet but the closest thing to what you are looking for is the net2max 1cc service. you get a pbx with sip, iax, and skype all integrated. along with all the major IM’s and a web based email client that you can add POP accounts too, etc. if you do not already have a free account i recommend taking a look.

spg

sadly, this isn’t in hte hands of grandcentral developers. the best they can do is offer to place the call for you - and they do this. you can goto the site and select a contact to call, grandcentral will then call you and them like so many other services. i hate this method. personally, i just send my contact info to people via SMS as a vCard - now they’ve got my info stored properly.

by the way, i find that truphone has exceptional voice quality. i agree that gizmo fails in that regard, but it’s not a problem with the spec, its a problem with their implementation. much like having a standard PC that runs horribly slow sitting next to one with the same advertised specs, running much more smoothly. the problem is that gizmoproject connects to the POTS system using a very crummy codec. i’ll repeat myself for clarity, since i seem to be rambling a bit, truphone has amazing audio quality. sadly, there service is only offered to users of highend smart phones. fortunately, buying one of these phones can make your phone bill cheaper, since you can save on roaming and int’l calls. i liken buying a SIP compatible smartphone to paying a premium price for a hybrid car: pay upfront for the future savings, and do the world a favor. in the end, for many people, neither path is much more expensive than the other. if you roam internationally just ONCE with a standard AT&T contract, you would have broken even by buying, say, the Nokia N95 that i use.

(sidenote: i’ve owned a Honda Insight since April 2001 - my hybrid car analogy came to mind months ago when i signed up for truphone and stopped using minutes on my GSM plan)

I have accounts on Gizmo, FWD, and others. I am all for open standards. More importantly, I am a believer in using what works best. Skype penetrates firewalls, works over proxy servers, and flat out sounds better than anyone else. Not a single one of the other solutions out there that supports “open standards” even comes close on any of these areas. When one of these other services steps up to the plate and starts offering the same quality of service that I get from Skype–in the three areas I mentioned–I’ll be one of the first to shout it over the rooftops, believe you me.

i just thought i’d chime in regarding SMS - i’m not sure that this is what you meant, but it’s the best i could figure from your post: truphone gives SMS over IP, just like voice over ip, SMSoIP is free from one truphone user to another - or it costs some $$$ to send to a normal mobile phone over GSM or CDMA. i use it - matter of fact, i’m heading to serbia for a week in februaury and i’m having my grandcentral number forward inbound SMS to my truphone # instead of my normal GSM because, well, i won’t be bringing my sim card with me. i wont need it. i’m going to have 100% free calls back home to the USA while i’m gone, and i’ll send and receive SMS for, i think it was $0.15 each. not the cheapest rates, but for short term use its admirable.

oh, and skype? are you crazy? you demand a SIP URL for any open SIP client to connect from - which is good - but also demand a proprietary hack of SIP to also be included? how about this: stop. using. skype. switch to ANY sip-compatible service. gizmoproject, truphone, whatever. just use SIP to start with and, well, be happier. if you switch to gizmo, and get the other end to switch as well, then even your calls from gizmo to their POTS numbers will be free. yeah, check it out. skype is a bad thing for the VoIP industry. it is preventing other (superior) service from attaining the limelight they should have.

just my 2 bits.
-jared