The Voxbone and iNum team were represented at the Pacific Telecommunications Council Conference last week in Honolulu.
PTC is held every January in Hawaii, attracting over 1,000 industry professionals representing carriers, mobile operators, ISPs, social media, academics, researchers, journalists, regulators, and others from around the world.
Over three days at the Hilton Hawaiian Gardens, there are conference tracks, keynotes, but also non-stop business meetings going on at the outdoor ”Tapa Bar” and in private suites in the various hotel towers.
As part of this year’s conference theme of “Harnessing Disruption” Voxbone organized a conference session titled ”Will Social Networks become the new Telcos?” featuring three outstanding panel speakers; Mr. Christian Michaud, SVP Product and Business Strategy of Tata Communications, Mr. Gary Kim, Editor of Carrier Evolution, and Mr. Ari Rabban, CEO and co-founder of Phone.com.
The audience definitely benefited from the experience and insights they generously shared on the evolving business models and symbiotic relationships between different Telco market segments and types of social networks. One conclusion was the importance of enabling developers to leverage powerful Telco infrastructure and capabilities by exposing APIs.
Along these lines, the iNum Initiative is looking at enabling iNum providers to take advantage of the popular Voxbone API. More on this soon, and definitely looking forward to seeing the many carriers, mobile operators and cable companies we spoke with open up routing to iNum (+883 5100) and the UN country code +888 in the coming weeks.
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Out of many, One.
Three years ago, iNum Initiative beta was officially launched with altruistic and idealistic goals in mind: to create a unified telephone area code for the planet Earth - combining social IP communications with the traditional telephone number.
To achieve this, Voxbone has been providing free iNum numbers and free iNum SIP and ENUM based interconnection to service providers, NGOs and enterprises.
We need your help to make iNum numbers universally reachable.
1. Send a text message to +883 510 000 000 094 and include your email address in the body of the SMS. If the test is successful you will receive an email confirmation. If +883 510 000 000 094 does not work you can also try 011 883 510 000 000 094.
2. Call +883 510 000 000 091 (it terminates on an echo test)
3. Share your results on the iNum Forum, or via twitter (hashtag #inum or #inumambassador) , the iNum facebook page
4. Let the customer service departments of your telephony providers know you want iNum calling and messaging.
Thanks for your help and feedback!
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Today’s iNum provider profile is Svanto.net, a new member of the iNum community. Svanto was founded by Sven Antonissen, who we had the opportunity to chat with via Email:
How did Svanto.net get started?
I’m into VoIP since 2003, starting with the Alcatel-Lucent PBXs. We have implemented site to site VoIP via different MPLS solutions. I also started working at Belgacom (Belgian Telecom Operator) where I had the opportunity to grow and learn how to operator a public network.
Svanto.net evolved out of that job. I found that Belgacom (as a traditional operator) was not giving the full service. There was a need for small operators who give their customers what they want at a low-cost price. Traditional networks (PSTN) are less cost sufficient than the new VoIP networks. There is no longer a need to maintain a large analog network. Sure you still need your cables, but as the technologies evolve, they are becoming less and less expensive. So why not pass on to the consumers the cost savings the operators are experiencing. There is no justification for high prices while the world is in an economic crises.
Where is your headquarters and what markets do you focus on?
My headquarters are in Belgium, Stokrooie (Hasselt). It is located in one of the growth poles in Belgium. We focus mainly on the residential customers (as well prepaid as postpaid) as on the SME customers (with hosted PBX solutions) as on the large enterprises and wholesalers (SIP Trunking to traditional PBXs, A-Z termination, international number porting etc…).
We also deliver cloud based Unified communications to large enterprises.As for country based markets, I mainly focus on the European market.
My customers vary between the residential customer as well as SME’s. But what they all have in common is that they don’t like to overpay their communications.
What are the unique challenges in your market ?
The unique challenges in the market are mainly to offer cloud based communications with the highest flexibility. It doesn’t matter any more if you would be located on this end of the world while your colleague is in the other part (except for the time zones off course). you still need to communicate when and how you’d like it. You shouldn’t be feeling like a slave to your cell phone, while having lunch with your friends. For instance, divert when you’d like it. Take calls when you’d like it.
When did your company first start to offer VoIP?
The company started offering VoIP in 2010.
What are your predictions for the future of VoIP?
VoIP is the next level of communication where communication is on an Internet basis. VoIP together with Video will be the future as broadband access is becoming more and more a right instead of a privilege.
Concerning iNum, when did you start to offer it to your clients and what kind of feedback have you been getting?
The first reaction of the customers is that they don’t know what it is. I started offering iNum just recently. But when you’d explain them that they could be reachable from an external access, they are all willing to take the number.
Why do you want to offer iNums and tell us about how you think your customers will use it.
I want to offer the iNums to the customer as they all should be reachable from any classic phone. I think my customers will use it as a social (like Skype) number. Where there is one network (social) where they all can reach each other without having to think what the cost will be. So they can focus on the main goal of communication, to achieve their objectives and reach their partners.
Are there any unique services you enable with the iNum numbers?
I will enable Unified Communications with the iNum numbers. So they can be dial-able as like a social network would do. This with their own domain name and iNum number.
Do you plan to work with the incumbent phone companies in your home market to enable iNum calling?
The main operators in Belgium are already working with the iNum, so I think I will work with them in order to achieve the bigger international picture.
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Going to start a new effort to highlight more iNum provider companies and their interesting deployments around the world here, via the written word as well as audio and video.
If you would like your firm included, please let us know!
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iNum is participating in World IPv6 Day, joining hundreds of organizations in what the Internet Society has termed a ” 24-hour test flight” for the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Ensure a smooth transition for your iNum services by testing on World IPv6 Day.
iNum providers & partners can log into the their iNum management portal and upload IPv6 addresses and SIP URIs under their iNum In and iNum Out tabs. You will find the IPv6 address under Inum Out.
But wait… there’s more… the first three iNum partners to provision and successfully test voice traffic over IPv6 today will receive a gift in the mail of some delicious Belgian chocolates.
If you don’t have an iNum account, today would be a good day to set one up, just send us a mail at inum at voxbone dot com to get the process started.
iNum’s public ENUM gateways will be enabled for IPv6 in the coming weeks as well.
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Voxbone has been selected based on its experience with International numbering, but especially the iNum Initiative to manage and facilitate the United Nations +888 country code.
Similar to the iNum Initiative, the +888 country code was assigned by the ITU to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to enable emergency communications networks, and will allow the UN to assign specific numbers to agencies providing humanitarian relief.
This new code will be an important part of the UN’s communications during future relief efforts. We now need the major fixed and mobile operators to provide affordable and ubiquitous routing to the UN +888 numbers as well as the Voxbone iNum range in +883. All iNum providers will be able to provide calling the UN +888 range.
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Recently we tweeted that t-Mobile USA (in addition to Sprint, and others previously shared) now supports SMS to iNum. The cost is $0.20 per message.
Thanks to a range of agreements, SMS to iNum should work from all major mobile providers.
( T-mobile does not yet support voice calls to iNum but we hope to remedy that soon! )
What does your mobile carrier charge for SMS?
Please let us know via comments to the blog or replies on the iNum forum. For instructions on testing SMS, please see this earlier post.
Of course, you will need the permission to call or text to International destinations in the first place, which in the US often requires an upgrade to the account. Please check with your provider for details, and don’t forget to ask them to support iNum…preferably at local call/texting rates!
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Per iNum user requests we have added five new access numbers. If you would like to suggest other new ones, please let us know via the iNum Forum.
Brazil Brasilia +55 6156719935
Brazil Florianopolis +55 4837175058
United States Santa Barbara (805) 308-9649
United States Albuquerque (505) 225-8243
United States Charlotte (980) 236-0398
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If you are at the Mobile World Congress you can call iNums anywhere in the world for the cost of a local call via a new Barcelona iNum access number +34 93 1815653
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We had the opportunity to attend ITEXPO in Miami last week to meet with several iNum providers as well as prospective partners.
TMCnet editor Patrick Barnard granted us the opportunity to share more about the iNum Initiative via a video interview.
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