The persistence of phone numbers
Despite the existence of messaging apps like Facebook's and What's App, and programs like Skype, the phone number persists.
The landline is fading - many people see no point when they have a mobile phone, but mobile phones have phone numbers. We don't have e-mail numbers, or Facebook numbers, so why do we have phone numbers?
People might want to keep a landline number that they have had for years for the purposes of remaining in contact with those who call it; there is not much point in losing or changing a number anymore than there is in changing your e-mail address, but a land line is really an anachronism.
We know that we can conduct interactive voice, video and text calls over the internet. The fact that there are so many ways of doing this may be the reason that they are apparently not serious platforms is that there are so many, but in the serious world of business there are two protocols that are coming into more and more widespread use - VoIP and SIP. VoIP is 'Voice over Internet Protocol' and SIP is 'session initation protocol'. Both are defined standards rather than generic names.
SIP comes first and enables the caller to specify who s/he wants to call and provides for the called party to know that s/she is being called. VoIP takes over after the call is set up and facilitates speech over computer connections includimg the internet. [This is a very simplified explanation].
As SIP is a published standard anyone may implement it in their software and in theory if you have a SIP/VoIP app/program, you can call anyone with a SIP ID, just you can e-mail anyone irrespective of their ISP or the email client they choose to use.
In theory. At least one mainstream provider of this service prevents SIP/VoiP calls to/from customers of other providers from happening to protect its revenues including those gained from providing access to/from the public switched telephone network (PSTN) which is traditionally charged by amount of usage.
Another reason I have recently discovered is security. If two SIP networks are interconnected, just as with any computer protocol, there is scope for malicious software to get into one from the other. Therefore it is convenient for an organisation to use SIP within its own world ("domain") but to use the PSTN to connect with others, even other SIP networks. This is roughly analagous with printing out an e-mail and posting it, or perhaps faxing it (though the established use of voice networks for fax may confuse the analogy.) The persistence of the phone number idea disguises this anomaly. Many people can't shake off the concept of a phone number.
Just as you can log into e-mail or any computer based service from any device anywhere, you can with SIP. Your landline number can be 'ported' - connected to the internet, and the number associate with your SIP account so that the landline can be dispensed with and calls to the landline can be answered from any device, including a smartphone, making the 'mobile' appellation rather ambiguous. The landline number is just as mobile as the mobile number.
As SIP seems to be the main professional protocol for setting up VoIP calls, ideally our e-mail clients and What's app/FB messenger etc should support it. If nothing else it would enable you to choose which app to use to answer a call from me, independent of the app I use. In the meantime there are many 'SIP clents' which will interwork.
The landline is fading - many people see no point when they have a mobile phone, but mobile phones have phone numbers. We don't have e-mail numbers, or Facebook numbers, so why do we have phone numbers?
People might want to keep a landline number that they have had for years for the purposes of remaining in contact with those who call it; there is not much point in losing or changing a number anymore than there is in changing your e-mail address, but a land line is really an anachronism.
We know that we can conduct interactive voice, video and text calls over the internet. The fact that there are so many ways of doing this may be the reason that they are apparently not serious platforms is that there are so many, but in the serious world of business there are two protocols that are coming into more and more widespread use - VoIP and SIP. VoIP is 'Voice over Internet Protocol' and SIP is 'session initation protocol'. Both are defined standards rather than generic names.
SIP comes first and enables the caller to specify who s/he wants to call and provides for the called party to know that s/she is being called. VoIP takes over after the call is set up and facilitates speech over computer connections includimg the internet. [This is a very simplified explanation].
As SIP is a published standard anyone may implement it in their software and in theory if you have a SIP/VoIP app/program, you can call anyone with a SIP ID, just you can e-mail anyone irrespective of their ISP or the email client they choose to use.
In theory. At least one mainstream provider of this service prevents SIP/VoiP calls to/from customers of other providers from happening to protect its revenues including those gained from providing access to/from the public switched telephone network (PSTN) which is traditionally charged by amount of usage.
Another reason I have recently discovered is security. If two SIP networks are interconnected, just as with any computer protocol, there is scope for malicious software to get into one from the other. Therefore it is convenient for an organisation to use SIP within its own world ("domain") but to use the PSTN to connect with others, even other SIP networks. This is roughly analagous with printing out an e-mail and posting it, or perhaps faxing it (though the established use of voice networks for fax may confuse the analogy.) The persistence of the phone number idea disguises this anomaly. Many people can't shake off the concept of a phone number.
Just as you can log into e-mail or any computer based service from any device anywhere, you can with SIP. Your landline number can be 'ported' - connected to the internet, and the number associate with your SIP account so that the landline can be dispensed with and calls to the landline can be answered from any device, including a smartphone, making the 'mobile' appellation rather ambiguous. The landline number is just as mobile as the mobile number.
As SIP seems to be the main professional protocol for setting up VoIP calls, ideally our e-mail clients and What's app/FB messenger etc should support it. If nothing else it would enable you to choose which app to use to answer a call from me, independent of the app I use. In the meantime there are many 'SIP clents' which will interwork.
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