RNKVoIP Now Boasts DIDs in 35 Offshore Countries
Virtual inbound phone numbers are in increasing demand as VoIP takes hold worldwide.
Dedham, Mass.-based Internet telephony service provider, RNKVoIP, a division of RNK Telecom, today announced that it is the only VoIP wholesaler to offer its customers Direct Inward Dialing numbers in 35 countries, plus all of the United States.
A DID number is a local PSTN number in some far-flung location that rings your phone. Maintaining a DID or DIDs in locations where you do business or have relatives or frequent contacts means calls from those parties are low-cost, easy-to-dial local calls, not long distance.
There's an increasing demand for DIDs or 'virtual incoming numbers' as they're also known, according to RNKVoIP CEO, Richard Koch. "We've answered the global cry for international DIDs," he told VoIPplanet.com. "So, that means you can have a number in Pakistan, or England, or France—a true local number. Customers don't have to accept DIDs with other foreign country codes."
The company can now provide its resellers large blocks of numbers in most of Western and Eastern Europe, all of Scandinavia, all of North America, the UK, and scattered destinations in South America, the Middle East, and Asia. (As a point of comparison, Skype's SkypeIn DID program extends to only 12 countries outside the U.S.)
As with termination agreements, setting up DID availability can be a complex business, involving different approaches in different places. In some cases it's a simple process of negotiating with the local phone company. In others, there's no way to directly approach those who run the phone system. This can affect the cost of the service.
"Either we negotiate with them, or we negotiate with someone who's already done that," Koch told VoIPplanet.com. "If we have a presence in that country, and we put a switch in that country, and have a relationship with the government, the phone company there would be our cheapest route. The more you get down the food chain, the more it costs you," he explained.
As a wholesale carrier, RNKVoIP provides VoIP service worldwide, much of it private-labeled, and originates and terminates some 10 million minutes per day. "We do a lot of international terminations for a lot of other carriers," Koch reported. "The more minutes we can get, the cheaper we can buy."
