Free service matches telephone numbers to cyber addresses

Did NumbersTo.com beat VeriSign to the punch?

Hong Kong, January 10, 2001. Last year NumbersTo.com, a Hong Kong based company quietly launched a web site where a single telephone number acts as a contact point to a members other web addresses. The service has increased in popularity and have received favorable media reviews in Asia. It is the brainchild of Asia's media entrepreneur Robert Chua, who together with several partners formed the company and developed the site.

NumbersTo.com enables a web user to type in a telephone number and get a listing of the member's URL, e-mail or ICQ address thus eliminating the need to list multiple cyber addresses on correspondence. The registration and look-up can be done on the www.NumbersTo.com site or any web site hosting the NumbersTo.com access box such as the popular www.humorlinks.com site recently featured on BBC.

Last fall VeriSign, the leading provider of Internet trust services announced a partnership with TeleCordia to pave the way for the convergence of telephony and the Internet by using the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) to map telephone numbers to service addresses." The proposed service using the new ENUM standards will use VeriSigns 24 million DNS addresses to match up telephone numbers with URLs and is in a trial stage at this time. It is expected that registrars such as VeriSign will charge for the service, and there are concerns as to the ownership of phone numbers and privacy.

NumbersTo.com was operational months before the VeriSign press release and is a free service. It is available to anyone world-wide wanting to use only one number to access their other cyber addresses. Since it is by choice, privacy is not an issue.

Paul Mockapetris, who created the domain-name system nearly two decades ago said in a recent interview that the possibility, and the general idea have been around for a long time. "It seems like a good idea, I wonder why it took so long." Mr. Mockapetris said.

Signing up with NumbersTo.com is convenient and requires only a name and telephone number and the addresses you want associated with this number. It is already available in Chinese and English, and a Russian language version is being licensed to Advanced Project Technologies of St. Petersburg.

Planned future enhancements include multiple cyberaddresses to one number, an integrated browser toolbar to easily connect to an URL and extensive search capabilities.

With the explosive growth of WAP phones and wireless PDA Internet access this service could find itself on most wireless devices as well. Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW) of Hong Kong is currently offering the service on all WAP enabled phones operated through them.

The company is in negotiations with leading international portals and telco companies who have expressed interest in making NumbersTo.com available to their users.

The concept creator and one of the founders of NumbersTo.com is media entrepreneur Robert Chua (www.robertchua.com and www.j2mediagroup.com/chua_story.htm) best know as the founder of the "No Violence, No Sex, No News" Satellite TV station CETV. He recently entered into a partnership with Times Warner.

His reasoning for creating this service? "Why remember multiple, complicated cyber addresses when simply your phone number will do?"

For further information contact:
Ingvar Grimsmo
J2 MediaGroup, Inc.
360-354-3711
mailto:ingvar@j2mediagroup.com