Why A Local Number is Important

To me, local telephone numbers in different countries have become important.

With the local numbers, the managing of my calls, being reachable to my friends and business colleagues in different countries has been made easier. What's more, the concept of always being a local or as Truphone's CEO Geraldine Wilson likes to say in interviews when referencing their upcoming "Local Anywhere" service, "Be global. Appear local."

It's important for a few reasons:

1) When making reservations a local number casts the impression that you can be reached more easily. This is especially important for restaurants that like to confirm the booking after the reservation is made, and again day of your scheduled visit.

2) Your friends in different countries don't have to make international calls any more so they call you more often.

3) You can point SIP DIDs to other SIP end points like a SIP client such as EyeBeam or Bria, or to a SIP box like Jazinga or Talkswitch, or to SIP phones or a SIP service like OnSIP.com and the traffic is free to you, plus you can manage your voice mail, all in one place.

4) With some ingenuity you can point the SIP traffic to an unlimited international calling plan like those from Vonage, inPhonex, CallCentric, etc. and know exactly what your paying to reach you on a land line.

5) With even more ingenuity you can point your inbound traffic to GoogleVoice like I do, and then place return calls via that same service to anyone internationally at very low rates (lower than Skype Craig Walker tells me) by dialing in and returning the calls.

6) And with total cleverness, the combination of GoogleVoice and Truphone means that I can receive calls via GoogleVoice, have one of my destinations that is dialed by GV my Truphone number and then have Truphone forward the calls to me on WiFi or to my GSM number whereever I may be at the time usually for free.

Now granted I'm paying about a total of $20.00 a month for the three country DIDs, but the savings is massive compared to that. I make a local call on my mobiles for anywhere from a few pennies a minute to those numbers. That's all. Granted I have SIMs in every country, but with what I've done my costs and my ability to be reached is plain SIMPLE.