loddon wrote on Sep 5
th, 2007 at 6:46pm:
CLI? Does this mean Caller Line Identification. If this is correct then isn't that just caller display to ordinary people? You can get this with any geo number.
Answerphone and fax to email, call diversions? Can't you do all this with a normal number? I have an answerphone and auto switch for fax calls on my little old machine at home. What do you mean by a presentation number? How is this different/unique to NTS numbers?
I am looking for special facilities that can ONLY be obtained with a NGN.
Yes, caller-id. but I could set it to show the 0870 number to me, rather than the caller's number. This let me see what sort of call it was without any special equipment at my end. And they offered a dial throuh where theperson I wanted to call would then see my 0870, not the home number.
Obviously nothing here is impossible to do yourself, on any kind of number you like, and I plan on doing most of it myself once I get an asterisk server up and running again.
I think it's more a case of how the network handles the call - 01/02 numbers seem to get hard-routed direct to exchanges (witness problems with ported numbers, which I recall have to bounce off the orginal exchange to be sent onwards to the new suppliers exchange.) wheras 08* and 03* numbers are NTS and can go direct to the service provider to deal with as they see fit, usually being directed back onto the PSTN to a geographic number, but more and more often being sent on via VOIP.
I think the point is, NTS makes it easier for a service provider to do the fancy stuff in-house, with obvious economies of scale, wheras with 01/02 numbers you have to have a number allocation and a physical presence on each exchange, or even at the subscriber premesis, to achieve it. At the end of the day, it's just cheaper to provide these facilities on an NTS number.