Response from: spg (Check me out!)

in theory this sounds great. in practice every country and international phone service that i know that work with non-geographically bound number is extremely expensive to calls versus calling a regular geographic landline number. it is highly unlikely the major carriers that handle nearly all traffic from the PSTN will terminate calls to country code 883 without a very high premium. this will make it not so interesting.

Response from: Dameon Welch-Abernathy (Check me out!)

The actual cost that's charged remains a mystery at this point, but one would hope it would be competitive. Likely not, though.

Response from: peter (Check me out!)

I don't see any advantage in doing this. There are many goverment agencies around the world that they would have to get buy-in from (very difficult at best). It would also be difficult for the PSTN networks to hand off calls to the many different VoIP carriers based on one country code. It's an interesting idea but I don't see it getting acceptance in the industry.

Response from: Ethelred (Check me out!)

International non-geographic numbering has been tried before - and failed (see visionNG - http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2001/31.html
) The problem here is to convice crriers to route the traffic - and at an affordable tariff. In most cases a normal country geographic number will be cheaper and will be routed by all carriers compared with an international number which is routed by very few carriers and is hideously expensive to call.

Response from: Dameon Welch-Abernathy (Check me out!)

I'm afraid you're probably right, Ethelred. The carriers will make it hideously expensive.