Gradwell dot com’s VoIP now offers nationwide BT telephone number portability

- significant private sector advance reflects ITSPA’s VoIP success with OFCOM.

Gradwell dot com today (19 June 2006) announces the roll-out of its nationwide number portability programme: customers across the UK currently using BT can now move their existing phone number to the Gradwell VoIP (internet telephony) service and take advantage of the benefits of flexible VoIP working.

This portability is
• seamless
• leads to cost reductions and a better, more personal service
• avoids any change of existing letterhead stationery formerly involving changes to VoIP.

Commenting on this new service, Peter Gradwell, MD of Gradwell dot com Ltd, said: “For some months now we’ve been able to offer
porting of numbers in the London area - but BT has been slow to allow
porting nationwide.”

“However, a substantial €40,000 investment in new Gradwell routing equipment - and our partnerships with new telecoms suppliers - has meant we can overlay a good-value VoIP service on a customer’s existing BT phone number, regardless of where he/she is located.”

Number portability is seen as a key driver to the take-up of UK VoIP services. In its recent Annual Report, ITSPA - the UK VoIP industry’s trade body - said:

“The introduction of a cost-effective, efficient, centralised approach to number portability is key to facilitating real consumer choice. ITSPA continues to lobby Ofcom - among others - to stress the importance of this for the competitiveness of the UK telecommunications market. Indeed, the National Inter-operability Consultative Committee (NICC) is now beginning to assess the viability and importance of a new approach to number portability; we hope that this will be implemented at the outset of 21CN.”