883 - ‘Earth’s Area Code’

Being in the voice industry for 15 years has presented me with an opportunity to study and learn from evolution as much as it provided me a role of active participation in that evolution. To the common user of telecom services over that period, a major shift has occurred that is quite often confusing. One such example is the transformation of the base-level understanding of what an area code is.

At a high level there is the country code, such as +1 for the U.S., or +44 for the U.K., which was a number that designated a country where presumably you were physically located. This in and of itself was generic and broad, but indicated to people by printing it on a business card that you have a physical office, or presence of some sort there and with that designation came some level of status. I can remember people who had U.S. and U.K. numbers on their business cards – that meant they were international and of a very fancy sort of course.

The next level of numbering fashion came at the actual area code. There was a time when 212, Manhattan’s area code, was a major status symbol. To have a 212 number meant you worked in New York City. Obviously that was a slight to Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx since they are all part of New York City as well, but in the less attractive 718 area code. Demand for this status was so high that the telephone company created a service called FX, or foreign exchange.

This is not the FX of currency trading, which is another intriguing and very similar topic, but rather that of central office trading in a sense. The FX service was for the user to have the ability to have a 212 number, but have it ring to and from another area code, or physical location. Basically it was the TDM voice version of spoofing, but in a geographic sense.

Then in the early 2000s came two new area codes for the U.S., 646 and 917. These were primarily assigned to mobile wireless service providers due to a lack of telephone numbers (real, or manufactured) in the high-demand areas such as 212. These new codes were very confusing to the average person, who did not know that the user was giving them a mobile number. I can remember giving people my 646 VoiceStream mobile number and they would say, “646, where is that? I thought you were in New York.”

The entire nature of countries and areas is tied to TDM, and it is a thing of the past. The design of the PSTNs’ of the world is hard-wired and with that design come borders and limits including distance. The real issue with borders is that they are restrictive and not conducive to growth. Countries, like the U.S., moved away from the physical metals of gold and silver as the basis of their currencies to expand their economies and grow their interests globally. This would not have been possible if the currency had to be tied to something physical, such as gold, as there is a limit. With the expansion of currency, other things have been given the ability to expand to be more global, such as air travel and economies in general. Communications networking followed the same course by default and/or by design with the advent of Internet protocol and the Internet.

In the world of Internet protocol and IP addressing there are borders based on the network that is carrying the traffic, but on the public Internet there is only one “country” with no physical “borders” per se. It still may be a major status symbol to have a 212 area code, but it is being diminished by the utility and availability of global geographic mobility. The perfect example of this is the Voxbone (News - Alert) “Earth Area Code” - 883.

883 is a crossover between the PSTN and the IP worlds. It is an official ITU “telephone” number, but it is very much integrated with IP and the nature of the Internet and now is also building a bridge between the two and the mobile SMS “cloud”.

Just like U.S. currency where it is printed and spread around in order for it to be used and relied on, Voxbone has essentially created its own currency with the 883 code. They can issue numbers within that code as if it is their own voice/SMS IP address block. The difference is that the value of the numbers increases as more are assigned and used as opposed to the value of dollars being reduced as more are printed, but then I suppose that all depends on who you are and how you define value.

From this announcement it is clear to see what direction the world is moving away from, but what are we all moving toward? The past is physical borders. The past is hard-wired. But without the physical layer there is no application layer. Pure applications cannot exist without physical just as pure fiat currency cannot be sustained without real value. What is happening now using IP over the physical layer is what is so different from the TDM services of the past above the physical layer. 883 is a gateway to the future for the things of the past, but that is actually the present for everything else already operating there.

I look forward to the day I have an 883 number that my devices are identified by and when someone asks, “Where is 883?” I will say, “Earth”. When put in that perspective one can only imagine what is next. IT

Hunter Newby (News - Alert) is CEO of Allied Fiber (www.alliedfiber.com).

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