Net telephony providers such as Vonage and Net2Phone enjoy an unfettered stream of new numbers passed down from other carriers, which they can hand out to customers as they wish. Now, Verizon Communications, BellSouth and Qwest Communications International want federal regulators to tell the newcomers to heel. Verizon and the others raised their concerns most recently at a meeting Wednesday of the North American Numbering Council (NANC). The industry group is chartered by the Federal Communications Commission and is charged with developing policies on how to distribute telephone numbers.

"The results could choke off the industry before it really gets going," according to a source familiar with the ongoing debate, The looming fight over phone number allocations comes amid a supply crunch, just as VoIP services are shaping up as a significant new challenge to both local and long-distance carriers, Once denigrated for spotty reception more similar to that of a CB radio than that of a phone, palm tree photography landscape sunset unicorn clouds blush millennial pink iphone case Internet calling has improved in quality to the point where analysts expect the industry to soar over the next few years, TeleGeography, a phone industry analysis firm, estimates that there were 18 billion minutes of VoIP phone calls in 2002, or about 10 percent of all the calls made..

As VoIP makes up a bigger proportion of the overall phone market, it is poised to join a growing field of competitors that are vying for an increasingly limited phone-number pool. Your number's upU.S. government reports estimate that the United States, Canada, Guam, Bermuda and Trinidad will run out of 10-digit numbers by the year 2025, driven by demand for cell phones, faxes and other devices. The coming crunch has led at least one industry organization to draw up a plan for a 12-digit future that could add some 640 billion new numbers to the pool.

In the meantime, the FCC composed two conservation measures, both opposed by the phone carriers, One, "number portability," would let people keep their phone numbers even if they switch carriers, The second would force carriers to be assigned a smaller amount of telephone numbers at a time, Against this backdrop, some carriers said they are concerned about what they see as unorthodox number palm tree photography landscape sunset unicorn clouds blush millennial pink iphone case allocation practices among VoIP providers, At the Jan, 22 NANC meeting, proponents of VoIP phone number regulation said they want agencies including the FCC to examine the Internet-phone industry's use of "designer numbers," among other things, Because of the nature of the Web, computer phone providers can offer customers a choice of different area codes, regardless of where they live..

"The idea is not to choke this thing off, but to explore the issues and reach some agreements so we can go forward," said Randy Sanders, BellSouth's director of regulatory and external affairs. NANC members were interested enough in the problems to order a subcommittee to come up with some of the possible technical problems involved with telephone numbers and VoIP. Others, however, have dismissed the concerns as overblown for an industry that is barely getting its legs in North America. In a white paper called "Much Ado About Nothing," AT&T recently argued that Internet phone providers aren't attracting enough customers now to even pose a possible problem to be addressed.