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

[Andrew Thompson]

David Brodbeck wrote:
>>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.  

For most end users, this is a correct statement.

Hosting companies, and other businesses with significant Internet 
presences can request a block of IPs directly from ARIN or their 
regional equivalent. Once assigned, the company can buy Internet access 
from any and multiple carriers who all point the inbound traffic to the 
companies assigned IPs. Among other things, this allows for 
semi-intelligent recovery if a carrier's network goes offline, by 
routing packets through another carrier's network.

> <snip>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.

This is very true, of our current area coding schema. I don't know how 
it could be made fair without perhaps a nationwide maximum charge for 
dialing 700 numbers or something like that. But it still ought to be a 
local call(very, very cheap or free) next door to my neighbors.

-- 
Andrew Thompson
http://aktzero.com/
http://dev.asteriskdocs.org/