Ofcom’s got your (VoIP) number…

It’s almost March already, spring is just around the corner, and everyone’s surely thinking ‘Gee, what telephone number I am gonna use for these new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies?’. I know I am. Ofcom to the rescue! Yesterday, Ofcom announced a consultation on numbering issues for this new environment.

The consultation document is available here. The regulator has proposed a non-geographic number prefix of 056 for VoIP services. Great. This means I’ll probably have to break down and finally get a PDA.

Ofcom also notes that:

[I]t is one of the Community requirements set out in section 4 of the Act that regulation should be technology-neutral. It could, therefore, be considered inappropriate to designate a number range according to the technology used to deliver the service. In order to remain technology neutral, it may have been considered preferable to select a ‘catchy’ title, e.g. ‘new generation’ voice services, which could be used to represent the distinctive characteristics of the service.

A catchy title? Let me think on that one.

I haven’t seen the FCC’s February 12th Notice of Proposed Rule Making on VoIP services (I’m fairly certain the text has not yet been released), but I haven’t seen anything suggesting that the U.S. is going to create a separate pool of telephone numbers for these new services. In fact, I recall hearing the opposite - the providers involved see no reason for a special numbering allocation. I’d be interested in hearing from someone with more knowledge on this issue…