When will telephone numbers get a bit smarter?
I want multiple mobile numbers to match different parts of my life (just like I have multiple email addresses). They all need to map directly through to my phone (I don’t want to pay any call forwarding charges). I also want the ability for anyone to add one extra digit when they dial me, adding a 9 for super urgent calls, and a 1 for social chats.
To help me know who knows me via my various mobile numbers, I want an easy way to see (online) the telephone numbers of anyone who has ever called me (a look-up to map numbers back to IDs would be nice also). If I needed to retire a number I could easily identify who would be affected and share a new number with selected individuals if needed (via automated SMS perhaps).
Elements of this system could be achieved with products available today. I could setup multiple SkypeIn numbers and route them to my mobile, but I’d have to pay call forwarding charges. To avoid the call forwarding charges I could run a VoIP client on my phone, but there are reliability and battery issues with this. In neither scenario do I get an easy way to manage and share my various phone numbers with my contacts (and by ‘contacts’ I mean anyone who has actually contacted me, rather than those I’ve choosen to invest time recording - interestingly none of the contacts management systems I know store what ID you shared with someone, they all take ‘you’ as a constant).
On the dial ‘9′ for urgent feature, this could be done by IVR perhaps, but would be best if it didn’t incur call charges before you answered (best for the consumer that is rather than the telco). In fact the whole multi-number, multi-priority system could be implemented via IVR, with temporal passcodes, priority prompts and more, but the screening is all a bit too obvious (especially on the multi-number front).
| If you liked this please Tweet about it or share it around |
|
Do you really want multiple mobile numbers? Surely it’s only a matter of time before numbers are dead. In a continution of the trend that’s seen those numbers that were once known by heart become hidden behind names on your speedial, surely numbers will soon be hidden behind profiles. In just the same way that ip addresses are hidden behind domain names. And then, just as friendfeed or chi.mp allow you different personas, you’ll be able to channel calls by those personas.
I agree that numbers will eventually die, and that I will be able to have multiple telecoms personas just as easily as I have emails. These personas will be able to share a single device (e.g. my mobile phone), and each persona will be able to span multiple devices (e.g. my computer(s), mobile, landline). But the death of numbers will be long and slow, and there is plenty of opportunity in the meantime for a viable numbers based solution to my issues. Telecoms moves slowly, Fax is still operating in this day and age of scanners and email, and Fax numbers still features on most business cards!
Services like chi.mp make the use of multiple personas too explicit for me (much like the IVR solution does). People can see they have been ‘restricted’ to a sub-set of your identity and will either feel slighted by the category you have/haven’t placed them in, and naturally try and extend into other categories for ‘deeper’ access.
Problem solved by Google: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/11/grand-central-to-finally-launch-as-google-voice-its-very-very-good/