this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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I know of a few things that do a WebRTC interface for SIP. So you can make SIP calls from your webbrowser.
yes but you need a server in the middle which is just a huge waste of resources when you could just use webrtc with basically no down side
Only if one side is SIP.
to use SIP, in a web browser, you need to use wrapper of some kind (probably WebRTC-based)… you can not directly use SIP in a web browser. given that web browsers are likely a hard requirement, it makes no sense to use 2 separate standards
SIP is the wrong choice for this project, and any greenfield project wishing to integrate web browsers with no hard requirement to support SIP devices
SIP is what we have right now for VOIP. If you can connect to SIP, you can literally ring people over the current system. Audio only of course. Backwards compatibly is worth a lot. If they are also SIP, you should be able to do video. The providers I know are using WebRTC for a browser SIP client basically. Baresip has this as an example module, but there is commercial software that also does this. Avoid having to a local SIP client installed.
Backwards compatible laying for the win. Much easier to replace things that way.
these are different problems now though… sure you can make calls to existing VOIP endpoints and PSTN devices, but that’s not what they’re trying to implement: they’re trying to implement group video conferencing, which WebRTC was built for
I think that's probably it. Their scope is limited. They are only wanting to replaced Teams, Meet and Zoom. Which their are a few open, self-hostable, alternatives already. I want a scope to cover WhatsApp and Signal, while being backwards compatible to just make regular phones calls when nothing better is available.
that’s correct. they want modern business video conferencing, which is a very different prospect than 1:1 messaging, or even personal group messaging. i’d argue that there are more of these available than there are business conferencing!
please don’t lump signal in with whatsapp 🤮 that kinda talk makes people think they’re largely the same (especially with the bullshit muddy water of whatsapp using signals encryption), and we have enough trouble trying to convince people to use secure alternatives already… between the open client, reproducible builds, and local key integrity they are truly not even remotely in the same league
If you can do many to many, you can do 1 to 1. That's why I see them as a single thing. Both Signal and WhatsApp do group calls as well as 1 to 1.
Most people don't get the difference between Signal and WhatsApp, but I agree Signal is way way way more trustworthy and security. When I have to run WhatsApp, for work, which is rare, it is in a jail, with as little access as I can give it. Including a fake address book with only who I need for the call in. It's a closed app from a data mining company. It is filth.