To several commenters: You're right, phone numbers aren't fixed. I went too far slipping that one in. My apologies. However... I generally don't remap remote

To several commenters: You're right, phone numbers aren't fixed. I went too far slipping that one in. My apologies. However... I generally don't remap remote phone numbers on my own equipment at home. I'm sure I could run an Asterisk PBX, but that's at least one level of complication harder than using a hosts file. The phone system is designed for companies to talk to one another, the internet is basically designed to allow distributed authority and control. Hackers have spent decades hacking into the telephone system to make it work more like the internet, before there was even an internet to resemble. And the internet is agnostic, it will absolutely let you give up control to a remote authority over some aspects of its operation, like for DNS or certificates or DDoS mitigation, and sometimes that's a good trade. But it's never obligatory. So the two converge and overlap, but I stand by my point that there's a fundamental difference stemming from original design and philosophy.