+883 Country Independent Access Code Approved by ITU

To prove the concept of the "ONE Number" for life concept turned into an reality sooner, I would like to highlight one of excited developments which is the +883 global country code been created by ITU.

A company called Voxbone started the iNum initiative. According to the explanation of the iNum posted on their web site,
iNum stands for international Number. It is a new kind of global phone number for a new kind of world -- a world with a new geography that's about local presence and global relationships, not about distance or national borders.

iNum is making use of the +883 global country code newly created by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). Unique selling points of a global country code are:

• area code for earth
• worldwide lifetime numbers
• with global number portability

You can find out more details and learn how to participate from their web site at http://www.inum.net

Jim Courtney posted an article titled "Area Codes Are Dead — Thank VoIP" at GigaOm on 12 Nov 2008.
"Over the years we have seen the gradual separation of phone numbers from geographical location. To date, Skype’s SkypeIn service has been the best demonstration of this trend; even though I live and work just outside Toronto, Canada, I have a Palo Alto, Calif., SkypeIn number for historical family reasons, and I recently acquired a San Francisco number for Truphone. The same separation can apply to most VoIP-based voice services."
For those of you who are interested, please check it out his original post there by following the link below.
http://gigaom.com/2008/11/12/one-number-for-worldwide-local-access-becoming-a-reality/

Just imagine the potential of incorporating this "ONE Number" concept into either your femto cell or HSPA/3.5G WiFi router at home or your 3.5G HSPA mobile device, you have a global number portability and presence. In addition with a help of the new innovative service such as the [NGN LIVE MMSC] global open MMS (Picture Message) service, one new kind of global operator solely rely on the Internet has been created!

One NUMBER ID for life

Personally I believe that the "one number" concept is very important and it's only a matter of time when will the concept become a reality. I wrote an email to explain the concept to my colleagues in 2007.

Thinking of the scenario that consumers have a broadband access at home and/or HSPA/3G on the road. Have used Fring for more than one year (I have my virtual PSTN number bind to my Fring account), it turns out very useful and help me save my international phone bills (using VoIP call out credit). In fact, I should say "two numbers". One is a real no. for domestic/home use and another one (virtual) for international incoming calls/outbound calling use. You can use it when you're roaming abroad. Carriers should keep an eye on Mobile VoIP and prepare a very good IP data billings strategy.

Thomas F. Anglero wrote an article talked about the same concept on 22 July 2007. In his theory, I quote
"GoogleTel = Ubiquisys (Femtocells)+ Bandwidth (Dark Fiber and 700MHz Spectrum) + Grand Central (One Number ID)
It seems very obvious at this moment what Google is doing. They are building a US nationwide Telecom operator but without the Telecom legacy. Look at the following Google equation:"
For those of you who are interested in his post, please follow the link below to read his original post there.
http://anglero.blogspot.com/2007/07/googletel-ubiquisys-femtocells.html

You may be wondering why I posted an article to talk about an one-year old article. Well, it's related to my next post to discuss the newly approved +883 location independent "country" code. With all the excited development and technology advancement, we are not far away from the reality of this "ONE NUMBER" for life concept.

Stay tuned.