ENUM: Dragging telephone numbers into the Internet Age
E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here’s how it works, and why it isn’t already widely used.
By Rudolf van der Berg | Last updated January 13, 2010 11:30 PM
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The main issue is that the ENUM standard (RFC 3761) demands that ENUM is a public service and that the control of the telephone number lies in the hands of the end-user. For this reason, it’s known as “Public-” or “User ENUM.” This is all in line with the Internet’s user- and endpoint-centric creed. This becomes quite clear if you read, for instance, the documentation of Nominet, which controls the UK’s ENUM registry (the +44 registry). It explicitly states that users can bypass their communications provider when they register in the ENUM registry. A significant amount of money is made by today’s telephony providers (be they traditional providers or ISPs providing VoIP bundled with Internet access). Telephony providers see User ENUM as a threat to their bottom line and are therefore not keen on introducing the technology nationally.
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The inet was driven by motivated individuals, not gooferments, not ISPs, not companies.
We need to get back to the fast innovation cycle of the old inet!
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