If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the texting phenomenon, it’s that interoperability can take a service from “kinda cool” to “can’t live without.” Voxbone is learning the lessons of the past, apparently, and has decided to allow cross-client chat and presence between its iNum service and other IM/VoIP clients. And the first provider it’s doing this mind-meld with is Google Talk.
iNum uses numbers from the International Telecommunication Union’s new +883 country code, so users can maintain a single phone number no matter where in the world they are. The new cross-messaging feature allows Google Talk users to dial and send IMs to any iNum number for free, and vice versa.
Voxbone service provider partners will be adding this functionality so that a customer of one operator can IM someone on another network to see if she has time for a call.
iNum also now includes presence, so users now can tell at glance whether a contact is best reached by phone or by IM.
“iNum’s new features leverage the fact that many people now IM each another before calling,” said Rodrigue Ullens, co-founder and CEO of Voxbone. “This is the same behavior we see with SMS in parts of the world where texting is popular.”