Americas Latest Export: Phone Numbers

Posted: 1/2004

Americas Latest Export: Phone Numbers
By Khali Henderson

A decade ago, exporting U.S. dial tone stoked the fires of international telecom competition, helping to spur lower rates, if not competition, in nations with state-run telecom infrastructures. Today, one company, New Global Telecom, is exporting a different U.S. commodity  telephone numbers. But, will this have a similarly significant impact as callback?

New Global Telecom provides a managed service that enables service providers in non-U.S. countries to deliver VoIP telephony to their customers along with remote telephone numbers. NGTs first such agreement is with Ekonom, a provider of ecommerce and IP communications services in Mexico as well as prepaid telephony services to the Mexican community in the United States.

NGT designed a customized service for Ekonom that includes digital VoIP functionality and U.S. local phone numbers for creating free on-net calling for communities of interest. This means customers of the new EKOFON Digital Telephony service in Mexico City, for example, can acquire a Los Angeles telephone number, permitting calls made from Los Angeles to be treated as local.

Ekonom is targeting this service at small businesses and residential consumers, as well as making the service available to its existing base of business customers.

Service is being provided by means of New Global Telecoms Broadsoft applications server platform and other TDM network elements, together with Ekonoms sales and support operation.

The exportation of U.S. phone numbers relies on IP telephony, which in turn creates an arbitrage opportunity for todays service providers much like international callback did in the 90s.

The thing it points out is the virtual nature of IP telephony and the power it brings to the death of distance, says NGT CEO Rich Grange. Its a good example of the many different and creative services that are going to be very disruptive and change the way that telecommunication services are delivered.

So, as in the EKOFON example, toll rates between two countries (the United States and Mexico in this case) are converted to a flat-rate unlimited local dialing. Grange says enterprises can give these numbers to local customers or partners so they can make and receive calls at local rates.

Another example, says Grange, is that of a prepaid calling card platform, which now can be accessed at the local level instead of via international toll-free numbers. [Service providers] can replace their international 800 numbers, which are very expensive, with local numbers in the various cities around the world and reduce or eliminate the toll charges, Grange explains.

He says the NGT system also helps companies that want to take advantage of a highly educated, lower cost labor force to do a call center application.

You can have your call center agents calling or being called through the VoIP application and eliminate that very expensive traditional telephony trunking that would normally be associated with connecting an internationally based call center, he says.

While there also may be some cachet associated with certain area codes, such as 212 for investment bankers or 202 for lobbyists, Grange says, mobility features, such as taking your phone number wherever you are with a broadband connection, call routing and presence monitoring, are the more compelling selling points for IP Centrex. With presence monitoring, for example, you can tell who is on-net and instantly click to conference.

NGT does not supply the CPE (for example IP phones) for its wholesale partners but makes recommendations for compatible vendors. While partners cut their own deals on the equipment, they stand to make 30 percent to 60 percent margin on transport depending on the market, Grange says.