A decade ago, Oren Tirosh published "mnemonicode", which was a selection of 1600 words which were optimized to be (i) internationally recognizable, and (ii) have distinctive pronunciation that would survive a low-quality phone medium and/or a non-native speaker.

I can only find a copy in the wayback machine now:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051109233255/http://www.tothink...

http://web.archive.org/web/20051109230247/http://www.tothink...