LNP does not allow people to “move from place to place within the US and (bring) their original phone number with them to their new landline.” The “L” stands for “Local”; LNP allows you to move from place to place within the rate center and bring your original phone number with you to your new landline. Landline numbers are still tied to a rate center for the purposes of E911. Because wireless and over-the-top VoIP have different rules for E911, they’re the only numbers that you can take with you if you move outside a rate center.

One criteria I have for evaluating some of these alternative calling services, such as Truphone or iSkoot, is whether they can use the Address Book native to the device. Truphone does; iSkoot does on the Skypephone but already has this as a suggestion from me (and I’m sure from others) for the iSkoot client on BlackBerry, Nokia N-Series and E-Series. Hopefully they’ll act on it in their next release of their clients.

Agree with Dan York: It’s more accurate to say wireless plus LNP killed area codes. iNum is killing country codes.

The most relevant change in my mind, though, is that as intelligent address books become more pervasive (on your mobile phone, office phone, skype client, etc.) phone numbers are more and more hidden from view.

When I was younger, I had a dozen phone numbers memorized. Now the only one I know is my own (oddly enough — not because I dial it, but because I need it as an identifying token when filling out forms, dealing with companies, etc.).

Ironically I tried out Obama 08 on the iPhone a week ago; simply see what kind of mashup had been done. It sorts your contacts by state and encourages you to call those contacts in your state. Well, Dan York lives in New Hampshire but has a cell phone supplied by his employer in Florida. So he ended up in the Obama 08 as someone to contact for voting in Florida.

I think I would thank the advent of mobile phones for it, which pre-dates voip in starting the trend of making area codes irrelevant.

Thanks for your kind words and mention of what we are doing with Voxeo to enable iNum functionality… just one correction, the iNum number for the weather app is: +883510001800028 (the one you listed actually is an iNum going to my cell phone, which explains the several calls I got from folks tonight).

Hillrider,

You are absolutely correct that wireless has killed “area codes” in North America – I would actually argue that it is a combination of wireless and also Local Number Portability (LNP). With wireless, people have just moved wherever and brought their phone with them. With LNP, people have moved from place to place within the US and brought their original phone number with them to their new landline. Thus I dial a Boston-area 617 phone number and reach a friend’s home out in California. Add into that the “unlimited” calling plans here in North America that don’t differentiate based on region and all together you have area codes fading into irrelevancy.

Perhaps Jim might have better titled this “Country codes are dead…” because the real strength of iNum is that it creates a new country code that is no longer bound to a geographic “country”. I went into a bit more about the value this has in my post at: http://blogs.voxeo.com/voxeotalks/2008/11/11/how-to-get-an-inum-a-global-phone-number/

As to how much your carrier will charge, this is one of the things Voxbone is currently negotiating with carriers now. I know their goal is to get the costs to be as low as possible, ideally down in the couple-of-cents-per-minute range. We’ll have to see how successful they are in these discussions. Right now, iNums are primarily reachable via VoIP services. It’s the promise they have that is interesting.

Dan

BTW, how much does my carrier charge me to call +883? I assume A LOT (because it sounds international), and won’t call it. And certainly I won’t take the time to look it up!