TalkPlus CEO Jeff Black’s resume demands a new cliché: uncontrollable entrepreneur.

Black loves being at the leading, bleeding edge. His history includes launching the first U.S. retail computer store (Tandy Radio Shack), the Alta Vista search engine, and the first Internet maps, just to name a few.

And he’s been dabbling in VoIP for two decades.

At DEC in the 1980s, he worked on an early DECnet phone. “The problem was, there wasn’t enough DECnet in the world to ship one,” Black recalls. “About 10 years later it was resurrected as a broadband phone by Cisco.” Black also experimented in the 1980s with putting multiple inbound numbers on a single pager.

So it’s no surprise that Black’s latest venture, San Mateo, CA-based TalkPlus, is a forward-looking marriage of VoIP and mobile phones to unify personal communications.

TalkPlus began as an IP-PBX company in 2004. But after looking at the dynamics of the business, Black had second thoughts. To launch the product, an extensive customer support organization was needed.

Taking a fresh look at customer needs, Black decided that what people want isn’t a PBX. What they want is to unify communications - for example, different local operations of a single company - without losing local presence. “We set out to build Voice 2.0,” Black says.

The choice of where to deliver that service was simple. Mobile carriers already have coverage, a customer support infrastructure, and their devices are already in everybody’s pocket.

Last month, TalkPlus launched a free trial version of its unified phone communications on mobile phones. This week the company premiered TalkPlus Pro, which includes features aimed at businesses like built-in conference calling.

While plenty of other services can forward calls from other numbers to different phones, TalkPlus is different because it lets you create entire virtual identity for each number.

For example, take a plumbing company serving several communities. It’s important to have local presence in each of those communities. No one wants to call the Bangalore call center when the drain backs up on Christmas Eve. But you don’t necessarily need to have physical operations everywhere.

With TalkPlus, you can create a unique number and listing for each community you serve. Not only do calls come into your primary number, you also see which operation is being called. And when you call back, your customer will see the name and number of the local operation. (However, TalkPlus can’t help you with the accents of foreign call center employees. You’re on your own there).

While you can achieve the same thing by getting local landlines, the cost for each business line is about $60 a month. TalkPlus gives you the same results for less than $5 for each line.

TalkPlus also solves the problem of deciding whom to share your phone number with — for example, the guy you met last Friday night at a bar. You create an identity for your dating persona and give out that number. When a call comes in, you’ll see immediately that it’s a social call and not your boss or customer.

If you decide that you don’t want to hear from this guy again, no need to make up a story about having to sit by the bedside of an ailing grandmother. You can “blacklist” the caller and he’ll get a standard “out of service” message. Or if you get married, you can easily shut down the number entirely.

TalkPlus also has put a lot of thought into the technology side as well.

In addition to calls to mobile and landline phones, the service also supports SIP and Skype calls that are completely VoIP. “I think we are the only player in the world with true SIP dialing from a mobile phone over a voice channel,” he adds.

TalkPlus can also ring calls over to another number without connecting a second call. When asked about this technology, Black winks and calls it “auto-magic. That’s a technical term.”

Another distinctive feature of TalkPlus’ technology lets subscribers make long distance voice calls at low VoIP rates without using the cellular data channel.

Calls go through TalkPlus’ server, which uses a least-cost engine to determine the routing for calls in realtime. “We don’t compress voice calls, but we drop the cost by 90 percent,” Black says. “We offer broadband rates over a carrier-grade network. And you get cheap calls both inbound and outbound.”

The service also allows callers to place calls through a company telephone network, to present a professional “face” for remote workers.

Black is also thinking about the needs of international travelers and will be offering SIM card management. “You register all SIM cards and TalkPlus rings them all,” he explains. You pick up the call with whatever SIM card you’re using at the time.”

TalkPlus works with Cingular, Sprint and T-Mobile on about 70 cell phones currently. Black expects to double the number of phones supported by February of next year. Support for PDAs is also coming in January. In 2007 he plans to expand service into Asia, Europe and Latin America.

In addition to selling direct, Black is promoting the service through other channels including carriers and broadband service providers.

Signing up with TalkPlus is easy. Just sign up on the website, create your identities, download the software to your phone (TalkPlus calls you), and start making calls.

TalkPlus’ pricing structure is about $4 a month for the basic service, with a $3 per month charge for each virtual number. Usage is about two cents a minute.

The company offers several calling plans. It’s important to note that only TalkPlus Pro plans include dial-out identities. The service includes unified voicemail, available from any phone as well as online and via email. The free trial comes with 250 minutes of free calls until January.

One of the biggest gripes about cellular service in the US is that the carriers’ year-long and longer contracts give the customer no way out if the service is less than adequate — say, as is often the case, beset by frequent outages.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can go a long way to helping consumers make an educated decision before they agree to a long-term contract. But it refuses to do so.

MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan reports that the FCC has maintained a detailed database of cell phone service provider outages since 2004, but the agency refuses to make the data public.

MSNBC’s Freedom of Information Act request for the data was rejected by the FCC, Sullivan reports, because “(r)elease of the information could help terrorists plan attacks against the United States, and it would harm the companies involved.”

Let’s look at each of these.

Sullivan writes that the “aiding terrorist” line comes to the FCC from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which decided that the “same outage data that can be so useful … to identify and remedy critical vulnerabilities and make the network infrastructure stronger can, in hostile hands, be used to exploit those vulnerabilities to undermine or attack networks.”

To the DHS, it appears, allowing consumers to know whether their cell phone will work when they need it is a greater terrorist threat than potential attacks on America’s public transportation systems and its ports, neither of which the agency has done much to secure. Terrorism analysts quoted by Sullivan think the DHS’ concern is bunk, and couldn’t come up with a single scenario where service outage reports would be useful to terrorists.

The second reason stated by the FCC, about harming the companies involved, is, in fact, an ironic and honest description of the FCC today — which is little more than a virtual rubber stamp for the nation’s major telecommunications providers.

The FCC’s argument boils down to this: Truth hurts.

A customer who knows that a certain cell provider experiences significant service outages is less likely to sign up, which, of course, would “harm the companies involved.”

Yes, truth hurts. And the truth is that it’s time to show the FCC’s Martin and his toadies the door.

Truphone company founder Ed Guy is one of his company’s best customers. “I’m a multiple device person. My cell phone doesn’t work in my house. So when I’d only need one device I’d have to carry two.”

Now he only carries one, thanks to UK-based Truphone’s long-awaited “mobile VoIP” for the Nokia N80, which was launched today. Currently the service is only available for Cingular and T-Mobile customers because Nokia doesn’t deliver WiFi-enabled phones for the other services.

Truphone’s “secret sauce” is simplicity.

You download the software by sending an SMS with the letters ‘TRU’ to a specified number. The phone is provisioned automatically and uses your existing address book.

There’s no sign-up charge or monthly fees. You only pay for calls outside the Truphone network. All you have to do is start making calls — no special numbers or key sequences. “It’s the type of thing your grandmother could use,” explains Guy.

When you dial a call Truphone first tries to route the call over the Internet. If that doesn’t work, the call is sent over the GSM cell phone network. There is reconfiguration that has to be done when you move between WiFi hotspots. But this job is still a one-key operation.

The obvious application for Truphone is cutting airtime charges, which add up very quickly for overseas calls. For example, GSM calls from the US to the UK are $0.34 per minute while the same call placed over the Truphone IP network is $0.024 a minute — less than a tenth the cost.

And there are other handy applications as well.

If you live in a place with poor cell coverage (like Ed Guy’s house in rural New Jersey) you don’t need another handset to make calls using your WiFi network. Another use is during a power outage. If you can find an operational hotspot, you can still make calls.

Now, some are saying that Truphone offers “seamless handoff” between cell and WiFi networks. That’s not quite true.

Yes, you don’t have to do anything but dial calls. But once the call is placed over one network it’s not going to move between the cell network and the WiFi network the way calls move from one area of cell coverage to another.

“We do have the technology for roaming between GSM and WiFi,” explains Guy, “but it hasn’t been deployed.” High battery power consumption is the issue, Guy says, and the company is working on a hand-off method that won’t interfere with battery life.

Truphone hopes to bring its dual-mode calling to more phones in the coming year, although Guy won’t commit to any dates. “We’re seeing a lot of user demand for VoIP-enabled phones,” says Guy. “It should promote the proliferation of hotspots.”