It's Official.

Ekiga is okay, okay, okay.
It works well, and offers many attractive features that Skype doesn't.
Skype is probably a more mature technology in some respects, but Ekiga, once tuned, is better and doesn't conflict with other applications trying to use audio resources.
In other words, if you have music playing, you can still hear the ringing tone.
It has to be said that if you hit the lucky sweet spot, Skype will do this too, but only if you are lucky. Ekiga co-exists right out of the box.
All you have to remember is, that like many other Open Source applications, a certain amount of adjustment is required to obtain good performance.
In Ekiga's case this is minimal, and I've probably lost less time with Ekiga than I originally did with Skype.
Plus, Ekiga is compatible with the new industry standard.