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Global Numbers: On the Brink of Disappearing?

SIP Trunking Featured Article

May 05, 2014


Global Numbers: On the Brink of Disappearing?


By TMCnet Special Guest
Dries Plasman, VP marketing and product management, Voxbone


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As the economy rebounds, businesses are expanding internationally in search of growth. In theory, global telephone numbers should make it easy for existing and prospective customers to reach these businesses. But in practice, that’s often not the case. 


Global phone numbers, which are numbers that have a country code, but are not bound to a single country, are not a new concept. However, they are gaining attention because of the continued internationalization of economies and businesses.

The first global telephone number

Universal International Freephone Numbers (UIFNs) can be called from approximately 70 countries today. Calls are billed to the called party, making them ideal for multinational companies, government agencies and humanitarian organizations, such as the United Nations, that want to encourage people to call them by eliminating the cost of doing so. Organizations can also advertise a single phone number that can be used in dozens of countries versus having a separate local number in each country.  

At least that’s how UIFNs are supposed to work. At last year’s annual IISF meeting, where global telephone service providers meet to discuss improvements in international inbound voice services, it became clear that there is little progress with UIFNs. In 2013, UIFN numbers could be dialed from at least one network in 70 countries, a status quo compared to 2012. Usage of the UIFN service decreased in Germany, Slovenia and the Netherlands, and slightly increased in Switzerland and France. 

Upgrading UIFNs for today’s global use presents challenges

UIFN usage has remained basically unchanged over the past five years because of several hurdles:

  • Local telephone network providers determine whether or not their customers can call UIFNs.  And many do not allow it. For example, in most of the 70 countries, customers cannot call UIFNs from a mobile phone.  This is a major problem, considering how many consumers and businesses alike – in both developed and developing countries – now use a mobile phone as their primary or only phone. 

  • For service providers, the process of activating a UIFN is time-consuming and typically requires a per-country activation and/or recurring fee.
  • UIFN call charges are not standardized across countries, making it difficult for the organization providing that number to estimate the costs it will incur.
  • The UIFN format makes the number look different from other types of toll-free numbers. That unfamiliarity makes some people reluctant to call UIFNs.

Global numbers are still declining, despite the obvious benefits. As a result, alternatives have developed.

Despite the globalization of economies and people, and the resulting benefits of global telephone numbers, the overall usage of these numbers is declining. The main cause is a “Catch 22” situation where landline and mobile telephone networks do not allow calls to global telephone numbers because they are used too infrequently to justify the cost of implementation (and because with global telephone numbers, they put revenue for international calling at risk). Demand from multi-national enterprises and institutions, on the other hand, remains low because few operators allow calls to these numbers. 

In such situations, where the free market mechanisms do not work, governments and its regulators intervene. But for telecommunications, there is no global regulator. The ITU is a global standardization body that recommends, but not enforces. And there are local regulators who enforce only when it comes to local telephone services and numbers, but not for global telephone numbers. Until now, the European telecommunication bodies have focused mainly on pricing (roaming), data protection and network security.

Over time, alternatives to UIFNs numbers have developed, enabling enterprise contact centers and service providers to extend their reach internationally through the use of local telephone numbers.   

  • The International Toll Free Service (ITFS), where the business or other organization use its local telecom service provider, mostly the incumbent provider, to get local toll-free numbers in foreign countries.  Through bi-lateral agreements foreign and local service providers transfer the calls internationally.

  • Direct Inward Dialing (DID) or international inbound SIP trunks, where the organization gets local geographical or toll free phone numbers from foreign countries via a specialized service provider.  The DID provider converts calls to a local geographical or toll-free number into a SIP trunk that is routed to the organization over the Internet or a private interconnection.

If global telephone phone numbers cease to exist, then what’s next?

Taking the above into consideration, it is highly probable that the use of global numbers on the traditional telephone network will remain marginal, and possibly even disappear over the next five years.   And that the international expansion of enterprise telephone networks will be done through the use of local DID numbers (aka international inbound SIP trunks) and new technologies, such as WebRTC click-to-call applications. 

About the Author

Dries Plasman is vice president of marketing and product management at Voxbone (News - Alert). Dries holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Leuven and a master’s degree in ICT from the University of Namur. Before joining Voxbone in2011, he was heading the product management department for enterprise and wholesale services at Mobistar, a mobile operator part of the Orange (News - Alert) group.  Dries also worked in management consulting (Greenwich Consulting) and contributed to several ICT start-ups.




Edited by Maurice Nagle

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