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Phone Numbers Go Locationless
flipper65 writes "Well, it looks like one of the last bastions of the regional Bells is under attack. Now your VoIP provider can give you their own area code and exchange. With the proliferation of broadband and voice services, your land line is now as mobile as your cell phone, and cheaper. Look for this to turn in to a battle royal. The regional bells will not go quietly into that good night."
I subscribe to VoIP and love it. I go on a trip for the weekend (out of the country). I can take my home phone with me.
Here in Yurp, in most countries mobiles have their own area codes (07xxx here in the UK). This means telcos can and do charge for calls to them at a different (higher) rate than traditional landline calls. However, this means the mobile user doesn't pay to receive the call as they do in the USA, where the other operators can't tell from the number alone that the call is going to a cellphone.
Presumably if the US cell operators are savvy they'll be able to offer "no incoming call charge" service plans for people using these new numbering schemes.
I always thought it was a bit bizarre of the US telcos to give geographical numbers to mobile phones.
The phonecompanies have been building up to this for the past 15 years or more, making areacodes mandatory even then.
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
I read the article (!). And it didnt say anything about area codes. It just said it would be easier to get phone numbers for VOIP phones.
Here in the UK you can now relatively easily get VOIP terminated phone numbers but only in the area code where you live (you need a billing address there). Now within the UK long distance calls are barely priced differently from local calls any more so this is ok.
What we actualyl need is a decent secondary market in VOIP phone numbers terminated in other countries...
I will exchange a London number for a New York number... any takers...
I believe the FCC has (had?) a rule that prevents assigning specific area codes to any "type" of technology. I think this rule was put into place when FAX machines were first put into widespread use. I would assume the logic behind it was to prevent the phone companies from assigning specific charges to specific types of technology.
I believe one of the only wireless-only area codes is 917 in NYC.
Of course, I think my info is a few years old and I thought that I remembered reading that the FCC was gonna change its policy a few years ago. I don't ever remember if that happened though.
I think you underestimate people's ability to adjust.
Here in France, all cell phones have a completely separate "area code" that tells you absolutely nothing about location (as it should be, since you could be anywhere). Pizza places don't care. All calls to cell phones cost the same. I'm sure bizarro VoIP numbers will be the same.
As far as expensive wrong numbers, HUH? At this point, an expensive long-distance call in the US is maybe ten cents a minute if you're really getting screwed; how long were you planning on staying on the line for that wrong number?
Having a number that is both supposed to enable people to reach you and is tied to your location is getting more and more silly these days. People move around, and take their phones with them, so location-based numbers are becoming meaningless. You can already get VoIP numbers that have no connection with your physical location, this will just change the choice.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I just don't get this fuzzing around 'area codes'. Area codes are based on the telco structure of an ordinary phone. I mean: you have to interconnect small phone networks from one state to another (or one country to another, and so and so). That's the 'area code' reason. It simply substitutes the 'operator' of the first days.
If you have a glance at any old days movies, you'll see why we have 'area codes':
-riing -"I want to make a call to chicago" -"yes sir, which is the number?" -blabla
the area code simply allows a machine to do that.
The point is. What do you really want when you call someone?? You just want to talk to that 'someone', you don't want to talk to the 'someone's house', so the phone number is just a synonym (a sort of an id number) of that someone's name. The area codes are just 'routing prefixes', useful for the machine that handles the connection.
Now, if you have a cell phone, that is really not necessary. In fact, in Europe it is handled that way. I'm very surprised of reading here about cell phones with 'area codes'...
Anyway, the voIp just wipes out this last frontier between the machinery you need to talk to someone, and what you need to localize him
Area codes are just dinosaurs waiting to die. have fun.
I recently got a 1-888 number in the US for only 42$ per month (http://www.quantumvoice.com) it's unlimited incoming and outgoing (probably some kind of fair use but so far no trouble yet)
And thanks to the 1-888 toll free bit, it doesn't really matter where your number is.
I'm from the Netherlands and I use this to stay in touch with people I know in the US.
Works like a charm
The smaller VoIP operators in the UK are issuing numbers beginning with 0870. These are non-geographic numbers which are charged at the basic long-distance rate from wherever you call. However, since these calls are excluded from the discounts offered by most carriers on regular long-distance calls, there is some (small) surplus revenue which gets shared with the VoIP service provider and which pays for some of their costs. Change provider, lose your number as that revenue stream gets choked off.
There is also a block of numbers with the 07 prefix allocated for "personal" numbers - numbers that follow you to wherever you happen to be. These are charged at mobile rates, which accounts for their relative lack of uptake: you might as well have a mobile phone in your pocket than keep redirecting the "personal" number to your nearest landline as you move about.
A new block of numbers has provisionally been allocated for VoIP, but apart from BT, no-one really seems yet to be using it.
However, the point about all of these numbers is that they cost more to call than a regular landline. Some cost more than others, but they all cost more.
Part of this is due to the fact that the telephone network is built to map numbers to physical equipment. There can be several local telephone service providers in the same geographic area and they're required to allow customers to move their numbers between competitors. The only way this can happen is for the calls to go to the network which orginally allocated the number and for it then to be bounced on to the new terminating network: this is a cost to the network with whom the customer is no longer doing business.
The same technological constraint applies to non-geographic numbers: someone has to own and operate the terminating equipment for the dialled number and then relay the call on to a "genuine" landline. However, in this case, the telco gets to charge for its services. Which is why the calls cost more.
The same thing is true for landline calls to VoIP numbers: they have to go to terminating equipment somewhere and hop off onto the IP network. If you want to change your provider and keep your number, someone has to pay to keep that terminating equipment in place. That someone is probably you.
Of course, it would be possible to re-engineer the phone networks so that the whole of the number you dial is looked up to make the routing decision rather than the first few digits, but look back a few years at the problem of growing Internet routing tables and remember why CIDR was invented.
The real solution is an alpha keypad you can type your domain name on...