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The Internet

ENUM Protocol in Australia? 142

Posted by Hemos from the using-it-down-under dept.
Master Kai writes "Looks like Australia's thinking about implementing ENUM, an internet protocol that will convert a simple phone number into a URI. The benefits are obvious, use one number to contact you on any communications medium. Your website, fixed phone, fax, mobile (cell) and email address. But at what cost to our privacy? I know that personally I prefer to give out my email address, because I can change it at the click of a button. And what about spam? Not only would spamers have your email address, but your contact numbers too. Eeeep! Anyway. It looks good nonetheless. Check out the news article , and for the Australian Communications Authority Discussion Paper. "
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ENUM Protocol in Australia? More

ENUM Protocol in Australia?

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  • I already... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Romothecus ( 553103 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:41PM (#4407460)
    get phone calls from spammers anyway.

    • Re:I already... (Score:5, Funny)

      by bakes ( 87194 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @10:09PM (#4407578) Journal
      I have received a few SMS spams in recent weeks. Apparently 'someone I know secretly fancies me', and wants me to call a 1902 number. They obviously fancy me enough to take 4.95 a minute from me, but not enough to meet me in person and let me stuff it down the front of their pants.

      • Re:I already... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        in all seriousness, try sending the 902 number(s) to the FTC, indicating that it costs $5/minute to receive such messages. They may have laws regarding SMS Spamming (it's analagous to telemarketers and cell phones). Even if there are no laws, having the statistics of people filing SMS Spam complaints would positively help efforts to create them.
      • Are you sure it is a spammer and not just someone you know who doesnt realise that 'anonymous SMS flirting' is a waste of money? I know O2 [o2.co.uk] have one (they seem to call it 'TXT flirt'). I suppose you could call it spam because you recieve it from a service that you have not asked to be a part of, but that would be like calling the 'Email this story to a friend' links on news sites spam too.
        • Well I consider spam any email that I didn't exactly expect or want. So somebody "sending a story" to me, is spam in my sense of the word. I didn't ask for that story nor did I expect it.
        • I know O2 [o2.co.uk] have one

          Ironically, O2 have issued a warning recently about a SMS scam that sounds just like their own service. Receivers are asked to call a £12/min phone number. That's about $20/min. I can imagine it now...

          Well....come....to.........the.......O2......... flirting......hotline.............On.......this... .....service.........you......will........find.... .....

      • Re:I already... (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I got this message too- only its 5.50 / min for me. I got the message twice from different numbers.. does that mean my two chicks are hotter?
      • That's Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Canada. When I lived there the MT&T company was not providing per-minute toll numbers in that area code. Normal long distance charges would apply, of course.

  • One thing we can agree on... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 403Forbidden ( 610018 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:41PM (#4407463)
    I think we can ALL agree that any form of "wonder number" is a bad thing.

    Any number/ID that ties YOU into everything that you ever sign up for and every communication device you own is never a good thing. Some things you just want to keep private.

    I can see where this would be good in a business world, where instead of saying "my fax is: ###-####, my phone is ###-#### my email is..." etc. they can just give out one number.
    • Social Security Number is sort of similar...
      • Social Security Number is sort of similar...

        SSN numbers are assigned to every US citizen, that's pretty much were the similarities stop.

        When the SSN system was first put into place the governemnt stressed that it wouldn't be used as an ID number and for social security only.

        If you don't belive me I've seen cases, like at Wal-Mart, where they ask for a SSN for something like a fishing license and the people being asked protest because of what I said above.

        Have a little faith in the USA, they had the right idea in the beginning.
        • SSN numbers are assigned to every US citizen, that's pretty much were the similarities stop.

          Well, not really. What does getting credit have to do with Social Security. Not much, but yet the SSN now equates more with credit than it does social security. Fact is that the SSN is the number that most peoples lives revolve around (I said most, not all, I know there are people out there who avoid this, but the majority don't). Given that, with a host of other pieces of identifying data, you can be tracked anywhere. Not giving wally-mart your SSN really doesn't have anything to do with privacy, it has more to do with fraud. If you use your real info to get that license, you can easily be cross referenced right back to your SSN, not problemo.

          Privacy is the biggest victim in the information society.
      • SSNs aren't unique. One of the 9 digits is a checksum so there are fewer numbers available than there are people in the USA. An (SSN,name) tuple should be unique, though.
    • Business's already have a wonder number. 1-800-abcdefg you call that number, you have directory options to contact whoever you need. and some people like having a 1-800 wonder number forward to their cell, phone, email, etc. So basically this 'wonder number' already exists, but now will be more readily available in austrailia for consumers.
    • > I think we can ALL agree that any form of "wonder number" is a bad thing.

      We can? No we can't. I don't.

      If you want to find some universal common ground, you're gonna have to pick something a lot narrower than that.

  • The threat of spam.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Breakfast Pants ( 323698 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:41PM (#4407465) Journal
    The threat of spam will keep this from ever becoming a reality. However this will probaly not increase telemarketing "spam" too much because there is already a public listing where they can get your number, its called a phonebook. The reason email spam will be a problem with this is simply because email is practically no cost to spammers.
    • And if theres one number that ties you to everything, this will probably be listed in the phonebook too. An instant list of valid e-mail addresses - at least it will cut down on the 'millions of fresh email addresses on CD' type spam. Though all other types will increase :P
    • It's getting very close to the time when I want to refuse all calls and email unless the other party has a token indicating that I have given permission. Well the tech details can be different, but how often do you get a call you want from someone that could easily be listed as a friend or something. Ok, so the cell phone provider might want to call to say I forgot to make the payment, or such, but that could be part of setting up the account. It should be non-transferable too, so they can't even give it to their own telemarketers.

      Reguardless of whether there is a system like this one in place, the spammers (phone and email) will be able to get your info if they want, we just need to invent the technological means of denying their ability to use it.

      Also, the ENUM thing is stupid. For those I want to deal with, the single ID I want is my name, not some randomly assigned number.

      • Re:The threat of spam.. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by gfxguy ( 98788 )
        I already do that - more or less. I have my email filter out everyone who isn't in my address list, on my work email account (with which I used to participate a great deal in usenet, therefore got dozens of spam emails a day). It is not easy to change my work email address. But you still get those miscellaneous emails that are important, so you can't just trash the whole lot of emails not from people in your address book. Helped to filter out the junk, though, I'd be able to quickly go through the junk folder and pick out the legitimate emails, usually there was no valid emails there anyway.

        But I finally changed my work address because I was sick of 100 spams every day, even if they were filtered out.

        As far as the phone goes, we used to have a service called privacy director - if the caller ID number was private, or "out of area", the person calling would have to identify themselves before my phone would even ring. Then you didn't have to talk to them, even if they identified themselves, because it was like accepting or rejecting a collect call, you'd just hang up, or press 0 to send a message "we don't accept those kinds of calls". So the only time the phone rang, we actually had a legitimate ID - if you hook that up to your computer, you could put a list of numbers that can ring your phone, and the rest get redirected to voice mail.

        Unfortunately, Privacy Director cost money, and I resent the fact that I have to pay for peace and quiet. It's a plus for switching to cell phone only - automatically violates the consumer protection act to solicit you on your cell phone.
        • Well, I only get about 10-15 a day, and that is annoying enough. Not nearly as annoying as an unwanted phone call. My wife thinks I should be nicer to the people calling since they are just the paid help, and probably don't make much. I want them all to switch careers. I hate the idea of paying the phone company to keep people from bothering me, particularly since they are alway lobbying to prevent effective opt-out lists and such. When a cell or long distance company calls me, I mentally put them off my list of possible services I consider using.

          It's not really worth it yet to spend much time on it, but I still have hopes that this will be very easy at some point in the future. I'll try the first Linux distribution that integrates it all out of the box :-)

      • Re:The threat of spam.. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FFFish ( 7567 )
        Oooh, the token idea rocks! Especially if one can have unlimited tokens. 'cause then one can assign an individual token to each friend, a set of tokens to various types of acquaintances, and one-off tokens to the gimboits that you just know will end up either using it to spam you or to sell to some marketer.

        One can then define acceptance parameters for the tokens. And will be able to trace just who the sonuffabitch is that leaked their token to a spam agency.

        "Token #275 is being used for spam? Dammit, Mom, I told you to never give that number out to strangers! I'm gonna revoke it. Here's your new token... and if you leak it, I'll revoke it and not give ya a new one!"
      • It's getting very close to the time when I want to refuse all calls and email unless the other party has a token indicating that I have given permission.

        What you describe is very similar to the capability security model. Check out EROS [eros-os.org] and E programming language [erights.org] for more info.

    • Australia (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vlad_petric ( 94134 )
      While I agree with you that this won't work in the US, let's not forget that Australia has a pretty strong anti-spamming legislation. I hope that ENUM works well-enough to prove the efficiency of antispamming regulations.

      The Raven

    • Re:The threat of spam. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tuqui ( 96668 )
      In Japan all the mobiles had a mail address based in the telephone number, like :

      0901234678@telcom.ne.jp

      But they had change it because the indiscriminate mail spam. You only need to send the spam from

      09000000001 to 0909999999999 @telecom.ne.jp

      and everybody gets your spam!.

  • Tel$tra Problem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CountZero007 ( 39755 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:41PM (#4407468)
    I think it'd be okay if it was an opt-in decision (like unlisted numbers).

    Assuming Telstra doesn't mess it up (like they did this year, printing some unlisted numbers in the phone book).

    I'm sure it'll just become another "feature" they try and charge people for.

  • Hey Baby can I get your website? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nathdot ( 465087 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:43PM (#4407477)
    "Sure you can. It's www.555-6789.com"

    *Later*
    "Yowzer, that mama was hot,hot,hot... Hang on... 555 (dawning on him) GODDAMMIT!!!"

  • I don't like it (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A little inconvenience to try and maintain my privacy is a small price to pay.

    I'd rather not be spammed on every device I own.

    Fears of it being a single ID number are pointless anyway. We already have that.

    We defaeated the "Australia Card" by referendum, but the government of the day (Labour I believe) snuck in the Tax File Number, which is in effect the exact same thing. ;)

    We've all got a bar code already.
  • Well, You have a domain: http://kaimarna.com/

    You're privacy isn't that great anyway if you have a way to contact you via a domain... Just do a whois...
    • But, especially with companies like Verisign, it seems like this information isn't very accurate...
    • After receiving a zillion junk faxes, I decided to switch the number listed in my whois record. The fax number there now is the FCC fax number to complain about junk faxes. I wish I could see the face of the FCC guy when the deluge of junk faxes start.

  • RFC 2916 (Score:5, Informative)

    by gmanske ( 312125 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:46PM (#4407495) Homepage
    The ENUM Technical Specification can be found here [faqs.org].

    Gmanske.

  • Did I miss something in the article?
  • This is an obvious use of the Hegelian dialectic to crack down on liberty.

    Though it might sound useful to the uninformed, this will be a disaster for the average citizen as they are deluged with pornographic spam from every single method of communication, and the public will be outraged and will call for revenge.

    However, the only way to stop such spam is to enforce outright draconian laws, much like you would have to do to combat piracy effectively. Like with MP3s, spam can be produced and distributed on a massive scale for almost no cost, and it's a force that cannot be stopped without a terrible price on liberties.

    Australia's politicians are notorious for trying to crack down on Online Rights, and this is a plot to do so.

  • phone number? Not mine (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bloody Bastard ( 562228 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @09:50PM (#4407513)
    I used to put my work phone number in my emails until a stupid guy from a mail list started to call me to discuss some topic that he disagreed... what a pain in the neck!!!
  • There is a hierarchy of communications media, each one with it's role, and the idea of merging them all into some super number is a bad idea. It reminds me of the car Homer Simpson designed with all the bells and whistles; on paper it looked good but when he put it all together it BANKRUPTED HIS BROTHER. OK maybe that wasn't the best analogy but you get the picture.
    • _Please_ don't speak for the rest of us. Just direct all calls to someone who can actually engage others in a meaningful conversation. We can actually articulate a concept, and by doing so, win the war. You can just ride on the dividends.Go look at that bondage pr0n some more. There, all better, yes?
  • In Australia there is one overwhelmingly dominant phone carrier - Telstra.
    If you have a single number to dial to also send someone e-mail, then they will no doubt try to charge people for a phone call, whereas you can currently send as many e-mails as you want once you have an internet connection. This will mean that get more revenue. After all, their last profits were down to a few hundred million.

  • Do Not Call List (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Do the aussies have a national Do Not Call list? If they did I wouldn't see a problem in using your phone number for your website url.

    And hey, you can always become a hermit if the spam ever gets to you.
    • here in Melbourne it seems as though there exists a national Do Call list. in fact I wouldn't be surprised if my government were using their extensive wiretaps to ensure that telemarketing quotas were being met!
    • Yes, there is one. Anyone who doesn't want to be contacted by Telemarketers should call the Australia Direct Marketing Association and ask to be put on the Don't Call list. And if they do call, make sure you get the CSR to tell you the name of the Call Centre before you go off at them.
  • That's just about as scary as posting on Slashdot and because they have your email address then being able to Troll your answering machine.

    Great.

  • Alston's and Telstra's Ineptitude (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ynotds ( 318243 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @10:22PM (#4407636) Homepage Journal
    At it's heart this is a product of the Telstra cultural malignancy whereby they actually believe that eight plus digit numbers define the pinnacle of usability.

    I really should write a book on the sad quarter century of Telstra struggling and failing to turn online information into an income stream without ever coming to terms with the fundamental dynamics of the information age, so I shouldn't try to squeeze too many details into a SlashDot post before I run the facts past a libel lawyer.

    As Australia's public telecomms carrier, Telstra's world view continues to blinker policy debate, even more so since our reactionary federal governement installed the even more reactionary Senator Richard Alston on top of the information and communications policy bureacracy, basically as an offshoot of his dabblings with the arts.

    How amusing that Telstra has been thrown a lifeline by the rise of mobile (cellular) phone usage. They still don't have a clue that the biggest plus for mobile phones is that they enable you to stop addressing people by their numbers.

    But it's still far and away the best place to live, even if the numbers don't always add up.
    • At it's heart this is a product of the Telstra cultural malignancy whereby they actually believe that eight plus digit numbers define the pinnacle of usability.

      This kooky shortsightedness is not unique to Telstra. This sort of thing is what passes for invention amongst the MBA and marketing crowd, especially in entrenched industries like phone service. "Everyone knows how to use a telephone number - let's just use it for everything!! In fact, Bob, from now on, I'm going to address you as 800-555-1212! Can I call you "eight-hun" for short?"

  • Since A Phone Number Is Arbitrary... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tsali ( 594389 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @10:26PM (#4407663)
    Personally, I think they should match it to your license plate number. That way, you can call people who are driving horribly and then email them about how badly they were driving via your PDA. We could turn road rage into its own medium.

    So if you don't have a phone number because you're one of the few people on the planet that doesn't have a phone, would you be unknown to the Australian government?

    • Personally, I think they should match it to your license plate number. That way, you can call people who are driving horribly and then email them about how badly they were driving via your PDA. We could turn road rage into its own medium.

      You know, I've often wondered what the effect of communication between cars would be.

      It might well _reduce_ road rage, since it would turn "cars" into "people".

      OTOH, it's probably not enough to offset the armor-and-muscles arrogance that tinted windows and 200HP supplies. :(
      • You know, I've often wondered what the effect of communication between cars would be.

        Man, I'm glad to hear you say that. I thought I was alone on that. Put a micro-power transceiver in every car on the road, all tuned to the same frequency... It'd be chaos. *chuckle*

        But then again, I also think that there ought to be a cutout circuit installed in car stereos that responds to a signal transmitted by emergency vehicles...

  • If I were forced.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @10:28PM (#4407672)
    I would simply stop checking my regular e-mail. I would have a personel website. To contact me, you would have to visit the website and fill out the online form. This would be used to stop clutter from any mass mailing. Those wishing a personal contact would have to do a personal vist to the site. My home phone would get an automated voicemail system. I would not be in easy reach of the mass marketers.
  • Hang up on them and get an email from them later. Same thing if you ignore their emails.

    "Sorry we couldn't contact you via email, sir, but if I could just have 45 minutes of your time to explain our unwanted product to you..."

  • Imagine ... (Score:2, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 )
    Imagine your cell phone getting slashdotted.

    Probably better not to, if you have a weak heart.

  • why a number? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RussRoss ( 74155 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @10:50PM (#4407764) Homepage
    If I wanted to pick a single identifier (which, like many others who have commented, I don't), I wouldn't want it to be a 10 digit number. Maybe I should start giving out my IP address instead of my named web site address, too. You don't see people rushing out to register domain names like 2139812309.com because they suck compared to even a ridiculous name like slashdot.org. I thought we were past using meaningless numbers for electronic addresses. Am I the only one who thinks they are doing this backwards? - Russ

    • why not a number? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by keithmoore ( 106078 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @11:14PM (#4407847) Homepage
      actually, numbers are great. they are terse, they work on any keyboard in the world (including telephone keyboards), and they are language-independent. and when you think about it, phone numbers really aren't much less mnemonic than the local-part of a typical big-ISP email address.
      of course, nobody's suggesting that we use numbers instead of email addresses or URLs, but addresses that consist of nothing but digits are in fact quite useful.

      and anyway, enum is only half of the picture - there's also a proposal for mapping URLs to other information from the rescap working group. The basic idea is that an identifier should not be inherently tied to one single kind of resource - given either a phone number or a URL (and the latter includes email addresses), you should be able to find out additional information about that resource if the owner of that number/URL wants to provide it. phone number to web page? easy.
      email address to phone number? sure, if I want to provide it. or maybe you have my voice # and want to send me email. again, no problem.
  • So now Australians can look forward to everyoone's "friend" goatse on X device. So what happens when mom and pop get that startling image in their e-mail?
  • I don't see the problem--if you don't want it, just don't use it.
  • I know many people in business spent enourmous amounts of money promoting their telephone numbers in the days before the web became commonplace. Now they have to turn around and invest again in promoting their URL.

    They have their numbers on stationery, business cards, they advertise on the radio (where a URL is quite difficult to communicate) .. so for businesses Enum is a bonus is it not?

    Internet Number http://www.internetnumberusa.com/ [internetnumberusa.com] has been providing this service for quite some time in Japan (where more users connect to the internet via mobile phone than PC) and the US to the delight of both business and users.

  • Great! This makes life much simpler.
    According to the ENUM spec [ietf.org] my new easy-to-remember all-purpose address will be:

    7.2.4.8.7.5.3.2.2.6.8.8.e164.arpa

    No longer will I have to use that impossible to remember email address (1st name)@(surname).org

  • Useless! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by clockwise_music ( 594832 ) on Monday October 07, 2002 @11:30PM (#4407895) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like a kinda-good idea in theory, but as I live in Australia I think it's just not neccesary. I already have lots of contact details:

    1. hotmail email
    2. work email
    3. work email 2
    4. mobile
    5. home number
    6. work number
    Naturally I give these out to different people for different contexts. There is no way I'd want everyone to know all of them!

    My question is, What problem are they trying to solve?
  • Why stop here?
    Ultimately you should have your own personalized, geneticly generated barcode (no need to tatoo) on your front head.
    Slightly elevated it would not only be scannable and obsolete any face recognition systems, but imagine people banging their heads to the public counters instead of signing their checks.
    "Sorry Sir. You were speeding. Could you please bang you head against mine for counter-signiture.
    Now that's what I call an URL.
  • On a semi-related topic, I've often wondered why the post office doesn't implement some sort of mapping from IDs to addresses. Just think of how inefficient it is for a person to notify everyone s/he knows each time s/he moves. Multiply that by the number of people that move each day. I'm surprised the USPS has any time left to deliver the real mail.

    Now imagine how easy it would be to update one central database with your new address, and your mail would automatically find you. USPS, are you listening? :-)

    -Pez
    • In the Netherlands, you just tell the "town hall" that your address has changed (and what it changed to) and they tell everyone else for you...

      It would be remarkably better than having to tell each and every entity that uses your address individually - but then there's always that ugly privacy issue...

      (On the other hand, if you're really lucky, the town hall will give you a bus tour of the town :)

  • Backwards (Score:3, Interesting)

    by captaineo ( 87164 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2002 @12:29AM (#4408086)
    The reverse of this would be even more useful to me - a mapping from DNS to phone number.

    That way I could give out my stable, unchanging domain name, instead of my phone number - which changes depending on where I am and who I'm buying phone service from.

    Maybe you could store a phone number in a special type of DNS record. Then you'd pay a small fee to a company that provides a toll-free number. People who want to get in touch with me call the toll-free number, type in the domain name, and the call connects. Computer-based phones or future stand-alone phones could let you type the DNS name instead of the phone number.
    • It looks like this should be possible. The RFC for ENUM describes a simple mapping of E.164 (international) phone numbers into domain names, which are supposed to have NAPTR records specifying mappings to contact URLs. I suppose you could have NAPTR records on your ordinary domain too, including one with a tel: (telephone number) contact URL.
  • ENUM is a simple protocol.

    Your first phone number maps to 0.
    Your second maps to 1.

    Object-oriented implementations are in the works, soon you will be able to iterate over your entire phone history!
  • Why not go the whole hog.

    Link this ENUM contact information to you banking details so that every online market researcher who scans the web for email addresses can sell your contact details to firms who offer goods that you might find useful based on your spending patterns. It may only propogate the spam thing, but hey, at least it would be useful spam. And that would be something very new in an age where there is nothing new under the sun.

    I mean, the Orwellians out there should know that big brother has been out there for the last 18 years ... There's no such thing as privacy ... They're watching you ... They're watching us all ...
  • See http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/about/presentations/ri pencc-ietf-ec/ for a presentation about ENUM. The interesting part is that it lets you take a phone number and map it to one or more URLs of the form mailto:foo@example.com, sip:foo@example.com (for VoIP and conferencing), http://blah, etc.

    Since the phone number space is relatively constrained in many countries and cities (e.g. London in the UK has changed its number space twice in the last decade), phone numbers are not an ideal solution to 'throwaway' numbers to give to potential telemarketers, but ENUM could help in theory.

    My idea was that you would have a number of email and SIP addresses, some only given to friends/family, some published on websites, and some given to companies that may resell these addresses without your permission. This last set of addresses can be dropped rapidly as and when spammers get hold of them, exactly as some people do today with email addresses.

    ENUM comes in as a way of mapping phone numbers to these more flexible email/SIP addresses - you have a 'private' ENUMed phone number, ideally ex directory, that maps to the friends/family address, and another for companies, and so on. You can change this mapping quite rapidly.

    Where ENUM is weak is that it discloses the actual SIP and email addresses used (as it has to). So anybody who caches the old addresses can continue to spam you, which is why you need to have more then one ENUM phone number.

    Overall, ENUM makes it easier to spam people (no surprise), but I thought I would at least explore if it could be used for anti-spam purposes... The weakness is that the number-to-address translation is made available to the client - this is the virtually unavoidable result of using a directory service to implement this mapping. Something like a forwarding service for SIP and email would be much more useful - i.e. it gateways from a public SIP/email address into a secret address, meaning that when the mapping changes the spammer is left with a useless address.

    Overall, I think ENUM is primarily useful for legacy reasons, since so many people know about phone numbers (ditto for equipment). What would be more useful is to enable phones to understand SIP URLs and email addresses (latter is already happening with mobile phones, and SIP will arrive in later versions of UMTS 3G mobile phones in Europe/Asia), and have a forwarding service as mentioned.

  • Usage scenarios (Score:2, Interesting)

    by otmar ( 32000 )
    I doubt that the "map tel-nr. to email-address" application of ENUM will be the real driver behind the ENUM deployment. These scenarios are IMHO much more attractive:

    Nowadays most offices run some kind of FAX-server, which enables people to "print to FAX-number" from their PC (instead of printing a document and then put that paper in a conventional FAX-machine) and receive FAX as tiff-attachments in Email.

    Usually, these FAX-servers are 24x7 online on the internet as well.

    With ENUM, one could implement the following: When the local FAX-server is asked to send some pages to +43662123456, it will look into the ENUM dns tree to check if the destination has registered an Internet-based method of transfering FAXes (e.g. FAX-G3/4 over TCP, or RFC822/MIME/SMTP). If yes, it uses its Internet-connection to transfer the document. If not, it falls back to G3 over PSTN.

    While this does not affect the work-habits of end-users (e.g officedroids), it has the potential to save businesses a fortune in long distance phone-charges.

    Or: Consider two companies who switched to VoIP for their intra-office phones and both use a gateway to call "normal" PSTN numbers. For calls between these companies, VoIP might work if the users use the right SIP urls when initiating the connection. With ENUM, users don't have to know whether the other side is VoIP-enabled and if yes, what their SIP-addresses look like. The caller will dial the number as usual; it's his phone (or gateway) which can query ENUM and then decide whether to route the call via VoIP to the other side, or to route the call through the PSTN.

    /ol (involved in the Austrian (NOT Australian) ENUM trial)

    • This is the only clueful comment on this story. Everybody else is just stuck on the privacy issues of something that does not really affect privacy.
  • Nobody currently above 1 seems to have suggested having more than one number. You would have one public number, which you answer at your leisure. You have another private number that is like your cell phone and good email and you pay attention to that. You might also have a super secret number that gets instant response..

    As far as I am concerned this is all about convergence, and that is good if managed properly.

    On the reverse side of the coin, we also need a smart concentrator device that you can manage more than one number and more than one service (phone, fax, email, etc..). Small form factor but varied display possibilities (vga, projection display, retinal display)... btw, I am just throwing out some cool stuff, not saying all of this is necessary in version 1.0.

  • Instead of having this elaborate remapping scheme, why not take a roughly 40-bit range of IPv6 adresses and have that map directly to phone numbers? I know phone numbers in the US could be represented by 10 digits beginning with 1, which would need only 31 bits. (e.g. represent 1-555-555-1212 as the binary equivalent of 15555551212, which is 1110011111001011101101111111101100). Apply standard DNS on top of that.

    Of course, I know that this would require global adoption of IPv6 to work, but I can dream, can't I?

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