hi!
Wether you have issues with non-geographical E.164 or not depends a lot of what regulation there is on E.164 numbers in the country code you want numbers in.
this is true for geographical i.e. cc-number space, but not for numbers from non-geographic prefixes. +878 is non-geographical space, a 'country code' not assigned to a region or state. the idea is to have a prefix allocated to the RIRs, and of course there have to be policies for this number space at the RIRs - i guess the RIR/NRO context is a perfect place to create such policies.
Other examples of issues include portability to other providers.
right. the idea behind non-geographic space is its good reference of voip-requirements. if number porability to pstn users is desired, the whois-solution should work for these cases too, if a pstn provider wants to offer portability to pstn i guess this implies a solution for the pstn-side by the requesting provider (probably more easy e.g. in mobile networks). but in case this space will never be used in pstn networks, it still is a helpful and good solution for voip-users.
Example: Sweden (+46) require portability between providers of voice services, but do not have geographical portability (yet). This imply if you as an operator in Sweden you have to allow people to move their number both to and from you.
this is regulation of the +46 cc-number space, i guess. otherwise if you say 'numbers' certainly PA space would be a problem, probably domain names, etc. but even if regulations in one country prohibit users and providers to use global numbers for voip, in other countries this would still be a preferable solution.
My point is not that your idea is wrong, but that you have to take into account a number of different issues...
certainly. i hope this is the right place for a discussion for these issues, and for finding good solutions for identified problems. :)
Can you be more specific on what the rules are for E.164 numbers in your neck of the woods?
that's germany. +49 numbers are in their regions fully portable between pstn providers. currently large regional blocks are reallocated by voip gateway providers to voip-users. so a voip-user from e.g. dresden can have a number from e.g. duesseldorf, hamburg, berlin, munich - or all of them. that's really ugly but voip providers actually have no big choice. there is a 'region' reserved for non-regional (in the end of course still national) numbers (+4932), but this is currently discussed and it's unlikely that this prefix will be useably anytime soon. also, there are strong doubts that this prefix will be freely available to voip-providers, the current discussion shows that there will probably be dependencies and drawbacks especially for voip. kind regards, Chris Heinze