[Asterisk-Users] OT: How to "own" a telephone number?

[David Brodbeck]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tmassey at obscorp.com [mailto:tmassey at obscorp.com]

> Is providing the ability to assign numbers to people instead of to 
> locations really that hard?  Is it really so much easier for Internet 
> domains to do it?  Or is this just an oligarchy at work?  :)

A phone number is more analogous to an IP address than a domain name.  If
you move, you'll have a different ISP, and you won't get to keep your old IP
address.  Your domain name, however, can be pointed to any IP address you
like.  It's that extra layer of indirection -- the domain being resolved to
an IP -- that lets Internet domains be moved so easily.

It's also partly a historical issue.  The phone system is layed out
geographically, because in the days of mechanical switches that was the only
reasonable way to do it.  Each area code represents a certain area of the
country, and each exchange (the first three digits of the local number)
represents a particular central office.  If you're outside the area covered
by that central office, there's no way to get a direct line run to you
(unless you use forwarding, or something like VOIP.)  Billing is based on
this, too.  If people could move numbers around willy-nilly, you'd never
know if you were making a long-distance call or not.