Still a long way off, but in the past four months Globe7 has risen from absolutely nowhere to the second most popular VoIP provider in the world behind Skype. Even Vonage fails to compete with these numbers. This is if you believe the softphone download counter on their website.

On the morning of the 19th June this counter stood at just over 11 million downloads, (11052636 to be precise) and all achieved within a four month period. Only Skype have ever produced more downloads in such a short period of time.

Globe7 offer excellent international call rates beating Skype hands down to almost any destination, however Skype are offering free calls to US and Canadian landlines until the end of 2006. These free calls are only available to residents of the US and Canada.

The Globe7 softphone is SIP based and comes with 100 free minutes and a free incomming US phone number on signup. The user is however required to use the softphone and no third party ATA is allowed to be configured. Besides integrating an mp3 player and video Globe7's softphone is also used as an advertising platform. This would certainly subsidise the VoIP call rates to a certain extent.