Many of us travel a lot. This means high roaming charges and no local phone number in the country where you are. Some people yet decided to buy local SIM cards and put them in their cell phone whenever they arrive at the airport. For them Truphone has just presented their new Multi-SIM capability, which supports travellers who take international SIM cards with them abroad. Calls to their Truphone number will reach them whichever SIM they're using at the time.

That's nice, but even cooler is Roam4Free's "Get a local fixed line number for any one of 28 countries on your SIM". Instead of exotic numbers from Estonia, Liechtenstein or the Isle of Man they will point local fixed line numbers for any one of 28 countries to their SIM cards when the new version of Roam4Free comes out. The customers can then be called on mobile phones with a local fixed line number.

Local numbers for global SIMs seem to be the new trend. The German company GlobalSIM has also started recently to give local fixed line numbers from 43 countries to their SIM card customers. That's even better than Truphone's Multi-SIM capability. But I see the disadvantage that this call forward will surely cost extra and the owner of the mobile phone has to remember many local numbers.

So I think that an entire new number range is missing for worldwide mobile telephony. The best thing would be a cheap interconnect to the ++882 or ++858 number range, or something similar. These are international codes that don't belong to any particular country, but to ENUM services. It would be great if people could call them from every country for local prices. So you would never have to change SIM card or number for travel. You just had a virtual number, similar to German 032 numbers which don't belong to a particular city but to VoIP.

Labels: ENUM, Mobile, Roam4Free, Truphone, VoIP

                                      

The Gizmo Project works on a new feature that seems to be still in heavy beta, but sounds quite interesting: Free Local Numbers for their website Gizmo Call. As I am always looking for a free inbound number from Peru I browsed their forum and thought that this could be a solution.

What are Free Local Numbers and how do they work?
A "Free Local Number" is a new feature of Gizmo Call that allows people around the world to call you by dialing a local number from their mobile phone or land line which you can answer on your computer at no cost to you.
[...]
Here's how it works:
When you call someone using Gizmo Call, a number will display on your screen. This number is what we refer to as a Free Local Number, which will be a local phone number in either the same region of the person you are calling or a number in the least expensive neighboring region for them to call. The next step for you is to tell the person you called to call you back at the Free Local Number on your screen. Optionally, you can email the number or send an SMS to the person's mobile using Gizmo SMS. The Free Local Number will also appear in the caller ID history of the person you called. Once the person you called has this Free Local Number, they can call you anytime at no charge or at a low cost. You can receive calls on your computer, mobile, or land line phone. To receive calls on your computer, you must first be logged in to Gizmo Call. ...

There is a little more information at the „Free Local Numbers FAQ“. But I have to admit that yesterday I did not get it running. I called a friend in Lima from Gizmo Call. But on the website no „free local number“ appeared, as described, that he could have called back.

Gizmo says „The Free Local Number will also appear in the caller ID history of the person you called“. To prove this I dialed my German Sipgate number from Gizmo Call. The incoming caller ID was „00858XXXXXXX“. What kind of number is this? Which country has „00858“ as international code? Definitely not Germany. I suppose it is a net only number blog, similar to the numbers you get from the ENUM provider e164.org. At least I did not find a country for this code. North Korea uses 00850, but I don't think that Gizmo has a branch in Kim Il Sung's country.

So I went on trying and called my US-american Truphone number from Gizmo Call to have a little talk with myself. The protocol says that the caller (Me, but from the Gizmo Call website, where I was logged in with my login data from GizmoProject) had the number „00185886XXXXX“.

What number is this?

When I called it back I heard only advertising. A female voice said that the caller had used Gizmo Call to dial my Truphone number. Then she spelled the word „Gizmo Call“ before she started again with the same advertising text. Is „00185886XXXXX“ my free local number for my US number at Truphone? Why can't I call it then? I was still logged in at Gizmo Call when I dialed it.

To me it seems that Gizmo's new feature has a great potential but I don't understand it yet. Also it seems that they want it to work only with their website application Gizmo Call. As we know Gizmo Call allows only a few minutes of free calls from their website. This time shall be used to tell the callee your free local number so that he can call when the time is over.

But maybe this stuff will also work as inbound number for the Gizmo Project? How do they want to distinguish between Gizmo Project and Gizmo Call, which have the same login data? I have Gizmo Project installed in my Voxalot account. My aim is to use this „Free Local Numbers“ feature to ring my Voxalot account, which I can answer on my mobile and my landline phone. A normal Peruvian Call In Number costs 233 dollars annually at Gizmo Project. But maybe the new feature can be a workaround? Other people are also courious about the free local numbers, as you can see in this answer from „jfinlayson “ in Gizmo's forum:

They indicated that the would be rolling out a beta in "the next few days". I had assumed that when it is ready for testing that it would:

1) Accompany another announcement to that effect, and
2) Either be deployed on a separate server or require you to set a switch somewhere to enable it, so that other Gizmo Call users are unaffected.

That's traditionally what "beta" has meant, anyway. On the other hand, the software industry's definition of "beta" seems to have shifted in the past few years, thanks largely to Google, where most offerings are "beta" in perpetuity.

Meanwhile, the strange caller id you're seeing has me curious, too.

Even more interesting seems what Martin from Voxalot says:

We are currently working with the SIPphone guys on GizmoCall.

All I can say is watch this space.
__________________
Martin

He is the moderator of Voxalot's forum and a member of the staff. For instance he announces Voxalot's new features. So his voice is quite important and his words make me even more courious.

Stay tuned!



More info: Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments: How Gizmo Project's free local numbers save me 230 dollars annually

Labels: ENUM, Gizmo Project, Gizmocall, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

GigaOM tells some news that seem interesting at first sight:

GrandCentral, the single-phone-number Web-based service launched last fall, is adding support for the free Gizmo Project Internet VoIP service, which may open up a whole new way to decrease spending on international or long-distance calling.

Still in beta, the GrandCentral service is the latest entrant in the often-attempted “single phone number” scheme. The Fremont, Calif.-based startup uses a combination of VoIP technology and softswitch-based applications to give users ways to tie multiple phone numbers, services (voice mail, etc.) and devices to a single inbound number.

This news seems more like a good piece of Public Relation work than a technical breaktrought to me and I want to tell you why:

If we all would be using ENUM the deal between GrandCentral and Gizmo wouldn’t be big news. With ENUM I can already route my PSTN number to my Gizmo account. VoIP users that call this number and do an ENUM lookup can call me for free.

Why bother for another number from GrandCentral?

I can implement the same call routing features of GrandCentral in my analog telephony adapter (ATA). I actually do. So whenever somebody calls my years old PSTN number I can let it ring wherever I want (for instance on my Gizmo Project soft phone or my mobile phone) and I can also filter the callers like GrandCentral offers.

Why pay extra for a service which I can already use at no extra cost at home?

Well, some might say that ENUM is difficult or that they just don't know it. But the point is that it’s totally easy to do an ENUM lookup before every call. SNOM VoIP phones do it automatically before they start the call. The VoIP providers could do it automatically before the VoIP call starts. Also they could enlist all their numbers in ENUM. The client wouldn’t even notice that ENUM is working in the background. It would just be all over IP and for free. But the VoIP providers don’t do it because the earn very well not doing ENUM and charge for calls that technically could be for free.

Others say that we should at least give GrandCentral credit for is their rules processing.

Well, the newest versions of the Fritz!Box do this out of the box. No complicated acronyms needed for installation. Just some clicks in the browser.

Incoming calls can be treated individually. You can for instance block unwanted calls or pass them to an answering machine. Friends and business partners can be redirected to a mobile phone, even if the call signal of the phone that’s connected to the Fritz!Box is switched off.

I am using such a Fritz!Box at home. It’s connected between my old telephone and the DSL connection. So all my calls go for free or for very modest prices over the internet. I do the configuration in my browser and it’s very easy. You can see an example here.

In fact the Fritz!Box is an entire PBX and cost me only 30 Euros, because I bought it used. It can do everything that GrandCentral does. Even an ENUM lookup before every call. But this is a hidden function for which you have to tweak the Linux that runs on the box. The Fritz!Box is getting better and better with every firmware update.

So to me GrandCentral is no big news and no necessary service. But I am always courious about new stuff.

Labels: ENUM, Gizmo Project, Grandcentral, Snom, VoIP