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One of the things that I missed out on at eComm 2008 was the fact that Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens proposed, in his session at eComm, proposed a country code for VoIP users: 883.
As part of it's proposal, Voxbone is giving away telephone numbers, called iNums, in the 883 country code to internet telephony service providers for free. The numbers will be, at minimum, 12 digits long. Voxbone will also handle sending the calls to their respective VoIP providers.
Initially, the 883 numbers will only be available within the VoIP providers. It will be an adjunct to existing identifiers on the various networks and is expected to be Eventually, calls from the PSTN will be able to terminate calls on the 883 country code, though it is not expected to happen until 2009.
I'm looking forward to having my own, global phone number that's reachable from anywhere and isn't geographically bound!
Via VoIP News
{ 6 } Comments
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.
The actual cost that’s charged remains a mystery at this point, but one would hope it would be competitive. Likely not, though.
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.
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.
I’m afraid you’re probably right, Ethelred. The carriers will make it hideously expensive.
I’m afraid you’re probably right, Ethelred. The carriers will make it hideously expensive.
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