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Virtual London spreads out via Internet phone

It already ranks as one of the most desirable cities on the planet to do business. But London, it seems, is set to get even bigger. In recent months, Israel, Malaysia, Australia and even parts of the US have all become sucked into the capital's thriving business community. How? It is all because of the recent breakthrough in Internet telephony -- and the emergence of a phenomenon known as "Virtual London."

Dial a business number with an 0207 prefix these days and the chances are that the person answering will not be in the British capital, but will be sunning themselves in the hills of Sardinia or working in a steamy office in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

Thanks to firms offering low-cost telephony via the Internet -- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) -- your company can be located anywhere in the world and still have a central London telephone number. The call is simply diver-ted through the Internet's pipes at minuscule cost to wherever your business happens to be.

The result is that you can have all the gravitas of a London number, but the cheap living and labor costs of anywhere you choose in the world.

Colin Duffy, managing director of Voipfone, an Internet telephony company that caters to the new market for a Virtual London number, thinks the trend marks the birth of a new generation of technologically literate entrepreneurs.

"I think people are realizing that technology can give them a choice as to where they live -- and that it can also be used to acquire some of the cachet of places like London without incurring the cost.

"Using technology is not being geeky any longer, it's very cool," says Duffy, whose own virtual company boasts a switchboard and servers in London -- and real offices in Brighton.

Sam Morgan, who runs Wired-Eyes, a Virtual London-based Internet design company operating from Sardinia, is delighted with his London number.

"We moved here because we had had enough of London and the high cost of everything that living in London means. But if people see a London phone number, I think that that gives them reassurance," he says.

Another happy Virtual Londoner is Philip Craig, director of the Kuala Lumpur-based airport company Leapp.

"It gives a better impression if we have got offices in London and Kuala Lumpur -- because people then assume that our headquarters are in London. And that's very positive for us because London means well-established, well-off, stable and solid. Virtual London allows us to capitalize on that," he says.

Craig has also found that it has led to better communication between them and their colleagues in Europe.

"If people think that you are in Malaysia then they have to work out the time difference and that can be a chore, and then when they have, they think it might be expensive because they don't know what the call rates are," Craig says.
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