Voxbone (News - Alert), a provider of virtual local phone numbers, has announced the availability of SMS outbound capability for mobile DID numbers. The service, which was in betas with 20 customers as of the middle of last year, is generally available as of yesterday.

Speaking to TMCnet this week at ITEXPO Miami, Dries Plasman, vice president of marketing and product management at Voxbone, said the company began life offering landline DID numbers, two years ago expanded to also offer mobile DID numbers, a year ago launched a mobile DID number service to support inbound voice, and is now adding to that with outbound SMS for mobile DID numbers.

The offering is aimed at two interest groups, Plasman said. One group is cloud communications providers, which as a result will be able to integrate landline and mobile phone services into single UC service offerings. The other group is application developers that want to improve their interactions with end users by using SMS to reach out to them instead of email. Plasman explained that SMS is preferable to email because SMS open rates are higher, and because email often gets caught in spam filters.

Voxbone offers the mobile DID numbers in six countries, which includes Belgium, Canada, Spain, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. But users in these six countries can send SMS messages to 110 countries.

Plasman said the unique selling points of Voxbone’s service include the quality of service it offers (it uses its own numbers and works with tier 1 mobile operators, but not resellers), and it makes sure the services it offers comply with telecom regulations.

Voxbone this week at ITEXPO (News - Alert) Miami was also promoting its WebRTC-to-SIP service, as well as the fact that it now calls seven of the 15 biggest global enterprise communications providers its customers. Those communications providers include the enterprise divisions of DT, NTT (News - Alert), Orange Business, and Telecom Italia.