Voxeo Talks

What if you could have one phone number that was reachable from any country in the world? What if you could take that number with you as you moved from place to place? What if that number was reachable from both VoIP and traditional PSTN service?

That is the vision of the iNum initiative launched today by Voxbone and of which we here at Voxeo are proud to be one of the initial partners.

As of today, all new applications created in our Evolution developer portal will be automatically assigned an iNum number and all existing applications can very easily have an iNum added. You can read more about this on our new iNum page and screenshots are included later in this post.

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THE VISION

The vision of what iNum numbers will be is simply this:

GLOBAL PHONE NUMBER NOT TIED TO GEOGRAPHY – Right now, any phone number you get is assigned to a particular country code such as +1 in North America, +44 in the UK, etc. That number is tied to the location you are in and calls to that number are routed across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and delivered to your phone in that network. You generally can not obtain a number in a specific country unless you have a presence in that country – or use one of the emerging VoIP services (including our platform) that let you have numbers in other countries.

With an iNum, though, there is NO connection to geography. An iNum comes out of a new country code, +883, created by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that are not tied to geography. You can obtain an iNum from any country in the world (through one of the iNum providers or partners). You will also be able to call an iNum from any number in the world.

PORTABLE – Because there is no tie to geography, you can take an iNum with you if you move to a new location. If you or your business is located in one country in Europe, for instance, and move to another country (in Europe or anywhere in the world), you can move your number with you.

ACCESSIBLE VIA BOTH VOIP AND THE PSTN – Today, if you want to call a traditional PSTN phone number from a VoIP service, you need to have some kind of gateway to the PSTN. With an iNum, calls from participating partners will be routed across VoIP networks without the need for PSTN gateways. This means that you have one number that you can call from services like Gizmo or Truphone that you can also call from the PSTN.

LOWER COST – The vision is also that iNums will be reachable at a low cost. In the launch today, calls to iNums from participating partners are in fact free but Voxbone is in the process of adding other partners that will charge what are currently small amounts.

RICH COMMUNICATION EXPERIENCE – One of the benefits of routing entirely via VoIP is that iNums will be able to be used for far more than simply voice. In the future they could be used for video, presence, IM, or even more.

Ultimately, iNums are part of the broader vision we share with Voxbone and others of a new communications infrastructure that lets us move beyond the PSTN of today into a richer communication experience.

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THE REALITY

While the vision is there for what iNums will be, the reality is that this launch today is still a beta launch to start the process and get more people interested. iNums were only assigned a year ago (June 2007) and the first numbers were actually allocated to Voxbone only a month ago (October 2008). The launch today allows users of the participating partners to call iNums for free and for people to call iNums from the PSTN through various local access numbers.

Now that iNum is officially launched, Voxbone plans to be rapidly adding additional partners to the program. As he relayed to me in a video interview, Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens laid out three steps they are taking next:

• Adding more VoIP services – They are in conversations with a wide range of VoIP service providers to add them to the list of iNum partners.

• Adding PSTN carriers – It turns out, of course, that simply getting an allocation from the ITU doesn’t mean the numbers are globally routable from the PSTN. The folks at Voxbone will be talking with various carriers around the world to get the +883 country code routed from those networks.
• Adding functionality – They are also looking into how iNums can be used for that richer communication experience through, for instance, the addition of presence.

You can hear more in the video interview.

So today, in this beta launch, you can call iNums from participating partners and in the coming months you will be able to call them directly from the PSTN in a growing number of locations around the work. (Keep watching the partners page for more information.)

For developers of applications on our platform, the news now is that you have a new iNum number that you can call for free from a range of VoIP services (such as Gizmo) and will be able to test this and use this number as the iNum rollout continues globally.

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HOW TO GET AN INUM

So how do you get an iNum assigned to your voice applications? As we explain on our iNum page, the process is quite simple:

Create a NEW application – In our Evolution developer portal, whenever you create a new voice application, it will automatically be assigned an iNum number. You can see it on the “Phone Numbers” tab for your application in the Application Manager:

Now whatever application you create will be accessible through that iNum.

Add an iNum to an existing application – For existing applications, all you need to do is go into the Application Manager inside of Evolution, go to the Phone Numbers tab and simply click the “Add” button next to “Add New iNum Number”:

That’s it! Then you can start calling.

NOTE: If you do not yet have an Evolution developer account, you can sign up for free and start developing voice applications today.

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COMMENTS?

We’re excited about being part of the iNum initiative and are thrilled to be bringing this new functionality to our developers and their users. Please do let us know what you think about this and how you find iNums to work for your. Either leave us a comment here or email me directly.

Thanks – and enjoy your new iNums!

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Technorati Tags: dan york, danyork, voice, voice applications, voip, voxeo, voxbone, iNum