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by patcon 4090 days ago
Hm. I'm not sure I get it. (from the Google cache)

> Q: Can I call any number I want?

> A: No. Ghost Call can only call other Ghost Call numbers.

> Q: How can we contact you?

> A: You can email us at info@ghostcall.io, or Ghost Call us: (490)-628-2381

So it's a ZRTP SIP provider that uses regular phone number format as the identifier? It strikes me as rather much like OSTN/OSTel, but using a phone-number-looking identifier rather than a username... and if that's the case, the whole ostn stack is opensource/auditable and federated, so I'm unsure of the improvement here, aside from the branding. Heck, I would prefer if they used the OSTN chef cookbooks and contributed back.

EDIT: Nooo! I'm the downer top commenter! I have become all that I am mildly irritated by. To clarify, I like that this service was created, and commend the interest of the devs, regardless of my outstanding questions :)

3 comments

So the project was built for a hobby, I wanted an encrypted phone service. But I wanted every aspect of it to be encrypted, from the signaling to the RTP. I wanted to make sure that no unencrypted client could connect to the platform. I would be interested in peering with oslec though.
"You can do this with open source, X, Y and Z" is the classic initial criticism of successful companies. What critics forget to consider is that 99.9% of people do not enjoy doing complicated things. If private calls were as easy as public calls, why wouldn't someone make a private call?

I think there is even an XKCD for this phenomenon.

In these situations I'm always reminded of this answer to the "Show HN: Dropbox" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224):

For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software

Seems better than Skype.
"Better" is a broad claim. Have you compared SIP/Skype call quality and reliability.