Back in the day there was GrandCentral, TalkPlus, PhoneGnome, Iotum and even Jangl. The first four were all clients of Comunicano, with Iotum and GrandCentral still enjoying life under different names and different ownership. The four all had various ideas on calling, totally in line with Jeff Pulver's Purple Minutes idea that IP calling would be game changing.
When I read about the planned Verizon My Number, I could only think of Jeff Black and his team from TalkPlus and the idea of a second number on a mobile phone. Back when we released news about TalkPlus the idea was very simple. Make it possible for a second line to ring a mobile phone, and more importantly, to present the second number when you made an outbound call.
The was back in mid 2000's. Jangl had a similar idea on instant numbers. Both TalkPlus and Jangl were great for dating, or for having a work and home line on a single device. Back then there weren't smartphone like we see today. TalkPlus had the multi-number concept working on Motorola Razr and Nokia phones with lots of fans. As we see too often, the VC's had different ideas because Vonage was a big hit, and they wanted TalkPlus to be in the minutes business, something a few of us disagreed with, feeling it was a race to the bottom.
Sadly, TalkPlus didn't survive, but others like Line2 came along and filled the same void. Now over a dozen years later Verizon is bringing the concept to life.