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A phone number is something we have dealt with for many many years. It’s something we understand very well and that we know exactly how to use it.

At this stage of development of telephony an internet based communication services, it’s pretty clear that phone numbers are becoming more and more irrelevant, being substituted by “buddies” or “contacts”. I don’t care what device they are using to take my call, I neither care if they are on the go or not. I want to talk with them.

A quick example: who is used to put the IP address instead of a URL in a browser? Do you mind if a web page is loaded from a server in US or Italy? From a normal PC or from a quad processor server? Everything occurs behind the scenes, I only know that I want to get to that website.

Speaking about communications and telephony, the story is the same. I want to communicate with “John” but I don’t care when he’s going to take my call, I just want to talk with him! SIP URIs, emails and URLS have all the same function, i.e. offering a unique identifier in order to simplify and hide the complexity behind them.

My take? Phone numbers are still relevant. It will be difficult to do without them, but we’re moving to the right direction. Click to call on web pages helps to do without phone numbers, they are not relevant since everything I need to contact a business or person is provided by the click to call service. In the ideal world, everything could be done by accessing a worldwide directory when people set their presence rules to choose when they are willing to be reached and where.

How far are we from this scenario applied to telephony? Please share your thoughts here.

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