Where is that Phone Number?

If you're a geek and mess with phone and VOIP stuff then you may find this site interesting. WhereCall.com will show you what company owns your actual PSTN number. I guess I figured all the numbers in my area were owned by Verizon, since that's who owns all the copper (POTS) phone lines around here. But I found out that's not the case. There are lots of different companies that own various blocks of phone numbers.

How could you make use of this information? I'm not sure how valuable this info is, but it can be helpful when researching why a particular company doesn't want to allow porting your number into their service. Whoever is actually in charge of the block of number you're in is not a partner of the phone company you're trying to move to. I ported from Verizon to Comcast without problems. But many VOIP providers will not port my number. This isn't always the only reason why a provider won't port your number, but it may be a piece of the puzzle.

Also, you might want to find out who a particular company is partnering with. For example, my Google Voice number is owned by Bandwidth.com. This tells me that Google has a partnership with Bandwidth.com.