Phone Numbers
This post from Technology Futurist about a recent announcement from the UK phone regulator regarding VOIP phone numbers got me thinking. A recent conversation with Tom Evslin, founder of VOIP pioneer ITXC, got me thinking some more.
If you’ve got a Vonage or any other VOIP phone, you can take your computer anywhere in the world, connect to a broaband connection, and make phone calls as if you were at home in the US.
You could be in Uganda, making calls to and from a (212) area code.
The number is important because that’s how the international tarriffs are calculated.
Why would people in Uganda want their own area code? Why would people in any small country want their own area code?
Maybe we’ll see something like pegging the currency to the dollar happen with phone numbers. Small countries might give up their numbers and just take US numbers or UK numbers where deregulation and commoditization have really taken hold.
The Internet is the driving force behind globalization and nowhere are we seeing it happen more quickly than telephony.