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The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

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Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#11

Post by Johnny555 »

If you want a stable phone number, use Google Voice (or another VOIP equivalent).

When I travel to Europe/Asia, I just buy a local SIM and use Google Hangouts to make and receive calls over IP. I treat my cell phone numbers as disposable, and indeed,I've been through 4 different prepaid carriers in the past few years, but none of my friends and family noticed any change since they all call via my GV number. (well, in reality, almost no one calls these days except my parents, everyone else SMS's... I don't even answer the phone if it's not from one of my contacts since 95% of the time it's a telemarketer, and if it's not, they can leave me a message and Google will transcribe it)

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#12

Post by scrollaway »

Johnny555 wrote: post #11

If you want a stable phone number, use Google Voice (or another VOIP equivalent). When I travel to Europe/Asia, I just buy a local SIM and use Google Hangouts to make and receive calls over IP. I treat my cell phone numbers as disposable, and indeed,I've been through 4 different prepaid carriers in the past few years, but none of my friends and family noticed any change since they all call via my GV number. (well, in…

What other VOIP equivalents are there for those of us who don't live in the US?

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#14

Post by Johnny555 »

Now imagine crossing the border, connecting to a new telco and being prompted to choose a data plan (or a phone number). This would be great! I’d purchase new phone number / data plan every time I’d cross the border. Telcos would profit from this and I wouldn’t have to spend time researching the best package (I will be presented with the options right in the popup on my phone)

The author has a very optimistic view of cellular companies -- in many countries, the official carrier rates for SIM's are far worse than those available from resellers, so the "Click here to roam" rates are not likely to be the "best options"

If telcos really wanted to give fair rates to roaming customers, they'd just negotiate more reasonable roaming rates so visitors wouldn't feel the need to buy a local SIM in the first place.

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#15

Post by runeks »

jrockway wrote: post #7
runeks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. Nodes on the internet should be identified by public key hashes, not IPs. Whoever can respond to a packet with a message, whose signature verifies against the public key that it's destined to, is by definition the recipient. Servers would have relatively static keys, while client keys could be as ephemeral as wanted. So rather than specify an IP address (location) as destination, you specify the recipient,…

IP addresses have nothing to do with identification. As the name implies, they're for addressing.

My point is that, with cryptography, they are redundant. If all traffic on the internet is encrypted, why do I need to both encrypt a packet such that only a single recipient can read it and specify an address? Any node on the path to the recipient could do a lookup and find Google's IP address, the client doesn't really need to.

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#16

Post by Johnny555 »

scrollaway wrote: post #12
Johnny555 wrote: post #11

If you want a stable phone number, use Google Voice (or another VOIP equivalent). When I travel to Europe/Asia, I just buy a local SIM and use Google Hangouts to make and receive calls over IP. I treat my cell phone numbers as disposable, and indeed,I've been through 4 different prepaid carriers in the past few years, but none of my friends and family noticed any change since they all call via my GV number. (well, in…

What other VOIP equivalents are there for those of us who don't live in the US?

I have a second number from Anveo.com that I can forward to any number in the world. They have voice mail and smart call flow routing so you can do things like forward unanswered calls to another number, set up a mini IVR system (i.e. "Press '1' to call me on my mobile", "Press '2' to call my mom", etc.). They do SMS forwarding for some countries, as well as web based SMS.

They also have a nice service that lets you purchase a number in a foreign country and forward it to your own number. My relatives live overseas so I bought a local number in their country that they can use to call me for free. it only costs me a few dollars/month.

None of these features are unique to Anveo, but I've been using them for a few years and have been quite happy with the service.

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#17

Post by drvdevd »

relics443 wrote: post #5

I agree with the author on a few points: 1. the telephone number system is terrible (but only in hindsight) 2. a telephone number should not be used for security But his premise of a DNS for phone numbers is ridiculous. Does he think the PSTN was invented when smartphones came out? What about the wide plethora of legacy phones that would cause countless issues? If someone did manage to complete he herculean (if not i…

I actually believe the PSTN is so ingrained in international networks that it will be around for another 50 years, minimum. Think SS7 and the fact that anything that touches PSTN relies on a legacy implementation at some point (probably all VoIP terminates there at some point, every cellular device, etc.). This is just a guess though on my part..

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#18

Post by wfunction »

Johnny555 wrote: post #11

If you want a stable phone number, use Google Voice (or another VOIP equivalent). When I travel to Europe/Asia, I just buy a local SIM and use Google Hangouts to make and receive calls over IP. I treat my cell phone numbers as disposable, and indeed,I've been through 4 different prepaid carriers in the past few years, but none of my friends and family noticed any change since they all call via my GV number. (well, in…

How does that work for all the services that refuse to accept VoIP numbers nowadays? Don't they still need your cell phone number, which keeps changing?

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#19

Post by Johnny555 »

wfunction wrote: post #18
Johnny555 wrote: post #11

If you want a stable phone number, use Google Voice (or another VOIP equivalent). When I travel to Europe/Asia, I just buy a local SIM and use Google Hangouts to make and receive calls over IP. I treat my cell phone numbers as disposable, and indeed,I've been through 4 different prepaid carriers in the past few years, but none of my friends and family noticed any change since they all call via my GV number. (well, in…

How does that work for all the services that refuse to accept VoIP numbers nowadays? Don't they still need your cell phone number, which keeps changing?

I ported my cellular number to GV a few years ago and haven't had it refused by any service that needs a phone number.

Re: The User Experience of Mobile Phone Numbers

#20

Post by wfunction »

runeks wrote: post #15
jrockway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP addresses have nothing to do with identification. As the name implies, they're for addressing.

My point is that, with cryptography, they are redundant. If all traffic on the internet is encrypted, why do I need to both encrypt a packet such that only a single recipient can read it and specify an address? Any node on the path to the recipient could do a lookup and find Google's IP address, the client doesn't really need to.

Huh? Then you have to send "google.com" as a string instead of its IP address, which doesn't have any benefits, and can even change meaning during the time the packet is traveling... not to mention that it'd flood the DNS servers for no good reason.
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