So, apparently there is a bit of bad vibes going around as the version of Ekiga in the repos is very old and I burned a couple of hours trying to get it to work with no luck. As of today, Dec. 3, I had good luck adding these repos and using the subversion version of Ekiga. Easy as pie:

https://launchpad.net/~sevmek/+archive

(for my hardy install)

Someone on the Ekiga irc suggusted the following for intrepid:

https://launchpad.net/~tlbdk/+archive

Since the first worked, I didn't try the second. Both have a drop-down to choose the release....

Hopefully this message will be useless soon as the new version of Ekiga is put in the main repos!!!!