Today, connecting with family, friends, and people you care about is easier than ever before. Only one century ago, sending a message to another city or state could take days or weeks. What if you had to communicate with people in other countries? Or across the Atlantic? Technology began to advance quickly to solve these problems. Telegrams, radio signals, and telephones, all made everything much easier. Even then, there were some details to work out, like the expenses of long-distance calls. Radios were not practical for any civilian applications. Telegraphy was quickly phased out by the phone, which even then required huge investments to work.

Much later the internet came. With the birth of the web, many of these problems could be solved. It took a bit for web platforms to catch up, but today using the internet to communicate is the superior alternative.

There’s no doubt that the good old phone is very convenient. Having someone’s number and just being able to call or message them very quickly is convenient. A lot of features make phones a great option for businesses and individuals alike. But what if you could get the best of phones and the internet? Enter virtual numbers.

What is a virtual number? Regular telephone numbers – which may be grouped under the name Plain Old Phone Service (POTS) – use landlines to connect with other numbers. This means that they use an analog signal, or that they communicate via cables. It also means that they are traceable. If you are called from one of these, you can find out where the other person is calling from.

Instead of using physical lines, virtual numbers connect and communicate via the web. By using the power of the internet, a virtual phone can connect with any other number in the world and still be as cheap as calling your neighbour. Virtual phones are also not connected to any physical location, which means that they are anonymous and not traceable.

There must be some catch, right? As you will see, virtual numbers really are the smart decision to make in this time and age.

Benefits of virtual numbers

Using virtual numbers has several advantages over the competition. Regular phone numbers need phone lines and other kinds of infrastructure to function. While these systems are reliable, they are expensive, difficult to build and maintain. That’s why international calls cost so much per minute. On the other hand, virtual numbers use the internet, which means they use the same technologies that you already have in your household or your office. Using the internet to make your calls or send your messages is also much less expensive, regardless of distance. You could call someone on the other side of the world without any problems. The quality of audio and video is all maintained.

Virtual numbers are also very easy to install. In recent times, many businesses have adopted virtual numbers, and in turn, better support and more user-friendly technologies have been developed. Nowadays, getting a virtual number is arguably easier than getting a regular number.

You may argue that regular numbers must have better support and more useful features, as they have been around for longer. Certainly, plain old telephone services have a lot of features like voicemail, call identifiers, call waiting, speed dialing, and conference calls. All of these features can be found in virtual phones.

But really, the most attractive feature of virtual numbers is anonymity. Since these systems are not bounded by telephone lines, they can be located wherever you need them. If you have a call center in Canada, but you want to expand your business to the States, then getting a phone with support for virtual numbers is the simplest solution.

In the era of tracking and privacy-invasive business tactics, you may want an extra layer of anonymity. In a similar way that VPNs (virtual private networks) allow you to browse the internet privately, virtual numbers allow you to communicate privately.

A common use case for virtual numbers is verification. You might have heard about two-factor authentication. By using a password and sending a code to your phone number, online services like Google or Facebook keep your account secure. More delicate websites like web stores – think Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist – ask for a number to verify you are a real person.

While you can be sure that major businesses won’t use your phone number for nasty things like spamming, some users may feel uncomfortable giving their numbers to an unknown virtual authority. Who knows what happens when they change their policies? Or if their databases are hacked?

You can skip all of these inconveniences by using a virtual number from us – Major Phones. We offer virtual numbers that you can use to verify your online accounts.  You can keep your regular number to yourself while enjoying online services to the fullest.