For more than a decade, the telecom industry has been promising to make communications easier for its customers by allowing them to have a single phone number, regardless of what device they use to communicate. This was the initial impetus behind personal communications services and helped fuel wireless/wireline convergence.

Small signs are now emerging, however, to indicate a single phone number might not be the communications Nirvana for many customers, even among the rising generation that depends exclusively on a cell phone. Special numbers are becoming part of the voice-over-IP (VoIP) landscape.

When AOL relaunched its VoIP service, AIM Phoneline, it specifically targeted a group of customers who want a phone number that they can use for things like online shopping, auctions and dating services, as well as business relationships.

“We didn't want to just launch a VoIP service; we wanted to solve a consumer problem,” said Alex Quilici, vice president of AOL Voice Services. “Consumers have a need for a new phone number other than home or cell. This service allows them to give out a phone number, but they can control it completely.”

AIM Phoneline answers inbound calls to the number, directs them to voice mail and sends customers an alert on a cell phone that an incoming call is received.

That's a valuable service, Quilici said, because more consumers and small businesses are doing business online or through indirect contacts and don't want to give out their primary number, especially if it's a cell phone.

Other companies have moved into this space already. RingCentral is targeting small businesses and mobile professionals with a service that provides a local or a toll-free number that enables the owner to establish a professional presence through a hosted VoIP service.

“We really concentrate on inbound calling features,” said Vlad Shumnis, founder and CEO of RingCentral. The service can embed a call button in an e-mail signature or a Web site, to allow customers or clients to click and call. If the user is online, the call alert pops up to allow the user to accept the call or route it to voice mail. Detailed call logs also are provided.

The RingCentral service is part of a broader hosted VoIP offering that also allows small businesses to tie together disparate sites so that they look and operate as a single office. Inbound calls are routed to individual sites based on policies such as time-of-day, agent availability, etc. Inbound calls can even be answered differently, depending on the extension dialed, Shumnis said.

“Small businesses can use services like this to present a professional front to the world without the expensive investment,” he said.

PICKING THE RIGHT HANDSET PARTNER

Nokia and Sanyo said their reason for forming a joint venture to make CDMA handsets was based on the fact neither overlapped on each other's markets. A big reason for customers not comparing the two is Sanyo has an exclusive agreement with Sprint in the U.S., and Sprint only sells one Nokia phone.