The iNum (international number) initiative was a project by

Voxbone Voxbone S.A. is a global communication as a service (CaaS) company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandwidth, Inc., with offices in locations including Brussels, London, San Francisco, Austin, Simi Valley, Dublin, Singapore and Iași. Voxbo ...

to create a global dial code for

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

communications. Voxbone is a Belgian company specializing in wholesale

telephone number A telephone number is the address of a Telecommunications, telecommunication endpoint, such as a telephone, in a telephone network, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN). A telephone number typically consists of a Number, sequ ...

s for

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

applications. The

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information ...

(ITU) allocated a portion of the non-geographic "

country code A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed. The term ''country code'' frequently re ...

" +883 to this initiative. Specifically, iNums were telephone numbers in the format +883 5100 xxxxxxxx. The system started operating in November 2008. Many providers offered iNum numbers and calls between them at no cost to their customers, but some charged for the service. Due to slow adoption, cost and compatibility issues, and the eventual lack of interest by Voxbone in maintaining the system, it was decommissioned in June 2020.What is iNum and where's it going?
Voxbone, 17 February 2020.Voxbone decommissions iNum
DSLReports, 2 June 2020.

Technical standards

The iNum networking was based on SIP standards and supported voice, video and

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

Transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target ...

was available between G.711 and G.729.

Video codec A video codec is software or Computer hardware, hardware that data compression, compresses and Uncompressed video, decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while ...

s supported were H.263+ and H.264, but theoretically any

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

, including

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

SILK Silk is a natural fiber, natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving, woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is most commonly produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoon (silk), c ...

and

G.722 G.722 is an ITU-T standard 7 kHz wideband audio codec operating at 48, 56 and 64 kbit/s. It was approved by ITU-T in November 1988. Technology of the codec is based on sub-band ADPCM (SB-ADPCM). The corresponding narrow-band codec bas ...

, for high-definition voice, could be supported as long as the originating and terminating networks both supported it and transcoding was not required.

Participating organizations and access

Voxbone provided free telephone number ranges to IP communications

service provider A service provider (SP) is an organization that provides services, such as consulting, legal, real estate, communications, storage, and processing services, to other organizations. Although a service provider can be a sub-unit of the organization t ...

s, enterprises,

NGOs A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

and

universities A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

. Approximately 400 organizations were allocated iNum ranges. Popular VoIP providers offering iNum numbers to the general public included Callcentric,iNum
Callcentric. ippi,Frequently asked questions
ippi. LocalphoneLocalphone - no more free iNums
DSLReports, 22 May 2018. and VoIP.ms.Order a DID number
VoIP.ms. While +883 is a valid ITU dial code, not all telephone carriers could route the calls correctly. Skype,

Belgacom The Proximus Group is a provider of digital services and communication solutions operating in Belgium and international markets. In Belgium, the company offers its main products and services under the brands Proximus, Scarlet, and Mobile Viki ...

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

, Colt,

Google Voice Google Voice is a telephone service that provides a U.S. phone number to Google Account customers in the U.S. and Google Workspace (G Suite by October 2020) customers in Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switz ...

KPN Koninklijke KPN N.V. (Royal KPN N.V. in English), trading as KPN is a Dutch List of telephone operating companies, telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterda ...

Orange Switzerland Salt Mobile SA (formerly Orange Switzerland) is a Swiss telecommunications company focusing on mobile telephony and fiber-optic fixed-line telephony services. It operates the third-largest mobile network in Switzerland, with 17% market share. ...

, Sprint USA and Verizon Europe were among the large communications companies that routed voice calls to iNum. SMS to iNum was supported by several agreements with international messaging providers. It was also possible to call iNums through access numbers in many countries and cities, so callers could make local calls to iNum when their local carrier did not support routing. The caller would dial the local access number, then after the automated greeting dial the desired iNum. In addition, iNums could be called through VoIP methods such as

ENUM Telephone number mapping is a system of unifying the international telephone number system of the public switched telephone network with the Internet addressing and identification name spaces. Internationally, telephone numbers are systematicall ...

(

RIPE Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE, French for "European IP Networks") is a forum open to all parties with an interest in the technical development of the Internet. The RIPE community's objective is to ensure that the administrative and technical co ...

e164.arpa) and SIP URI (format 8835100xxxxxxxx@sip.inum.net). Country code +888 was allocated for the

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (UN) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disaster ...

(OCHA) international disaster response and implemented using the iNum platform.

Cost

Voxbone offered free SIP termination to all service providers who offered it to their customers at or below the cost of a local call, leading many providers to offer the service at no cost. For example, Callcentric and ippi offered free iNum numbers and calls to any customer, and VoIP.ms offered them at no additional cost to existing customers. Localphone initially offered free iNum numbers, later charging $0.25 per month from July 2018, but calls were always free. Google Voice began supporting calls to iNum in 2012, initially at no cost, but in 2013 it set a rate of $0.03 per minute.

Later developments and decommissioning

After initial interest by many VoIP providers, adoption was slow. Most providers did not support iNum calls at all, and some of those that supported such calls charged for them, undermining the value of the project. In later years the initiative began showing signs of abandonment. The iNum blog had no new posts after April 2015, and in July 2019 the whole iNum website was redirected to the Voxbone website, which no longer mentioned the project. Callcentric, one of the initial supporters, reluctantly discontinued its iNum service in November 2019 due to incompatibility after an equipment upgrade. In February 2020, Voxbone announced that it would decommission the system later that year, and the decommissioning was completed in June 2020. Calls to iNum may still connect internally within the same provider, but not between providers.

References

External links