MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — Adding texting to its universal VoIP number service, IP carrier Voxbone said it has extended its “iNum” network to include short-messaging service (SMS).
iNum uses a worldwide “area code for Earth,” 833, to route free IP-based calls between participating carriers. While the service has heretofore been limited to a few VoIP providers including Jajah and Truphone, the new texting service will also be available via a handful of major operators.
“The move marks a breakthrough in iNum usage,” the company said in a statement, “as wireless subscribers from a growing number of prominent carriers – including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, Virgin, and Boost Mobile – now are able to text these numbers.”
iNum numbers use the international code for the Internet, just as the U.S. prefix is 1 and the U.K. is 44. Voxbone, a wholesale provider of IP transport based in Brussels, Belgium, receives 833 calls and instant messages and distributes them to local and national carriers for termination. Some incumbents charge a premium to terminate such calls, a practice that has so far limited the growth of iNum service.
Voxbone spearheaded the effort at the International Telecommunications Union for creating the iNum code for international IP calls, allowing VoIP subscribers to reach other subscribers anywhere in the world by dialing the 883 prefix rather than a traditional country code. The new offering, said Tim Behrsin, who heads Voxbone’s iNum program, in a statement, not only gives subscribers more free texting access, but also gives carriers “a net gain in text termination revenue.”
Last month Voxbone said that its revenue climbed 60 percent in 2009, in spite of the global economic recession. Usage minutes more than doubled, to 1.5 billion, driven by demand from mobile VoIP operators, enterprise users, and conferencing companies.