Don't Lose That Number: Why Mobile Communications Is Still About Digits

Wireless carriers are the punching bags of the mobile industry, notorious for holding back innovative services they don't control to preserve existing profits. Oftentimes they've earned that enmity, but making the leap from a voice-oriented world organized around a ten-digit number to a data-oriented world organized around bits and identity is not something that would happen overnight if they suddenly changed their tune.

Several compelling developments emerged this past week about the future of mobile communications. Apple previewed its iMessage product, designed (like Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Messenger) to give iPhone users a way of communicating with each other without texting or e-mailing. Evidence emerged that good-old-fashioned SMS text messages may have peaked, putting a huge source of wireless industry profits into question. And Nilay Patel uncorked a solid rant at This Is My Next pointing out that a mobile-identity system based around a numerical convention from the late 1940s designed to make it easier to use rotary phones doesn't make a bit of sense in the 21st century of Internet services accessible across multiple devices. There’s no doubt that it’s silly: even with number portability, phone numbers are meaningless for modern mobile devices that have no fixed location except for one key detail. Phone numbers are an international standard recognized by nearly everyone (even North Korea), allowing calls and text messages to be placed between San Francisco and China or Argentina and Norway through simple codes. The various Internet-based communications services that are emerging lack that universal touch. It’s obviously not because of the Internet itself, perhaps the most universal communications technology we've yet invented. It’s because of the same profit motive that drives people crazy when they think about their backward wireless carrier gouging them for another ten bucks.