Voxbone, the telecom company behind iNum, the area code for Earth, announced survey results investigating phone number usage.

• Over a quarter of people have had more than 20 different phone numbers in their life
• Seventy percent have lost contact with people as a result of changing their phone number
• Eighty-two percent would like the option of having a telephone number they could take with them and keep for life, wherever they moved in the world

iNum uses numbers from the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) new +833 country code, so users maintain a single phone number no matter where in the world they are.  One application for iNums is call centers, as an alternate way for the callers to reach them, at a lower cost or for free.

Voxbone provides iNum numbers free to carriers and service providers.  As the number wholesaler, Voxbone will receive calls to these numbers and deliver them to the appropriate service provider.  Participating carriers will resell iNum numbers to their customers so they can receive calls or merely route calls to the new numbers.