Voxbone has introduced a new service aimed at allowing customers to establish a local presence anywhere in the world.
The iNum service will make use of the newly-created +883 area code to create a global 'country code,' which will be backed up by banks of direct-inward-dial (DID) numbers.
The service has already been approved by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and will enter the beta-testing phase this month. Carriers participating will include Jajah, Gizmo5, Ribbit, Rebtel, Mobivox, VoipBuster, Voxeo and Voipuser.
The +883 calls require updates to carriers' switch routing tables, and so calls must traverse these carriers' networks. At the moment, though, all the carriers involved in the beta are offering routing for free.
According to Voxbone, the service could allow users to keep one phone number for life, regardless of if they move city, state or even country.