* It is hard for the calling party to make an ENUM call. I can only speak from my perspective in Germany and a number of other countries, mostly in Europe. Like many people, I am making 95% of my phone calls from my mobile. As there is no single mobile operator in the world who does ENUM lookups on outgoing calls (AFAIK, correct me) my only chance would be two-stage dialling, i.e. call an access number, then call the number I want to talk to.

I have written an ENUM Client for Android which is due for imminent release. It integrates directly with the Contact / Dialer application (indeed anywhere you can dial a number from). Whenever you dial a full E.164 number with suitable IP connectivity it automatically performs an ENUM lookup. If there are no results, the call proceeds as normal. If there are ENUM results, they are presented in a (sorted) list, so the end user can choose which alternate contact method to use. The application also offers the option to bypass the ENUM results altogether and call the original number. I'll send more details (including a download link) once it's formally announced. kind regards, Ray -- Ray Bellis, MA(Oxon) MIET Senior Researcher in Advanced Projects, Nominet e: ray@nominet.org.uk, t: +44 1865 332211

Hi Ray!

I have written an ENUM Client for Android which is due for imminent release.

That opens up ENUM for at least 0,5% of all mobile phone users worldwide. Or am I too optimistic. No, sorry, don't get me wrong. This *does* make sense, but I hope you agree it's not the answer to the problem. The makers of the more widespread handsets will not implement something like that guess for that reason, knowing that the majority of handsets are distributed through the network operators' channels. Two technical questions: 1.) Making the lookup does require your handset to have a GPRS / 3G Internet connection, right? 2.) If the result of the lookup is sip:someone@mysipprovider.com, how do you deliver the call. Again over IP? You know that you will have a worse sound quality than GSM that way and that you will violate the contract conditions of I guess 75% of all mobile operators that way? I mean, you may not care. But the discussion here is about widespread adoption. I can see the case where if an app like yours spreads (it could possibly we written for iPhones, S60 handsets, etc.) an operator may just decide to block all SIP traffic on his networks. That wouldn't necessarily make a good case for ENUM, would it? In other words; I'd like to see a robust and officially supported solution which would work for widespread deployment with (sorry) clueless people. Just to give you another example: There are some ENUM gateways in Germany. You can dial a landline phone number and you will get a new ENUM dial tone. Many people have plans which give them unlimited or very cheap calls from their mobile to landlines, so you can call call from your handset in Germany to a SIP address in China virtually free. Guess what ... Some network operators recently started to simply block those access numbers. To make it a bit more complete, they also blocked some other services such as calling card access numbers, phone conferencing services and Podcast to Phone services. User's of those kind of services have complained to the regulator, who didn't feel like saying anything about this. And given my understanding EU telco regulation (I can't speak for other parts of the world here) I wonder if the use of a regular geographic landline number to provide a gateway to VoIP targets would at all be in line with telecommunication laws of if this has just been tolerated in the past, as many things had been tolerated and are strictly enforced now. If you want ENUM acceptance, bring the subject up with the EU. They gave the GSM operators trouble re their roaming charged; they may also do something about ENUM. Regards, Torsten Ray.Bellis@nominet.org.uk schrieb:

...

* It is hard for the calling party to make an ENUM call. I can only speak from my perspective in Germany and a number of other countries, mostly in Europe. Like many people, I am making 95% of my phone calls from my mobile. As there is no single mobile operator in the world who does ENUM lookups on outgoing calls (AFAIK, correct me) my only chance would be two-stage dialling, i.e. call an access number, then call the number I want to talk to.

I have written an ENUM Client for Android which is due for imminent release.

It integrates directly with the Contact / Dialer application (indeed anywhere you can dial a number from). Whenever you dial a full E.164 number with suitable IP connectivity it automatically performs an ENUM lookup.

If there are no results, the call proceeds as normal. If there are ENUM results, they are presented in a (sorted) list, so the end user can choose which alternate contact method to use. The application also offers the option to bypass the ENUM results altogether and call the original number.

I'll send more details (including a download link) once it's formally announced.

kind regards,

Ray

-- Ray Bellis, MA(Oxon) MIET Senior Researcher in Advanced Projects, Nominet e: ray@nominet.org.uk, t: +44 1865 332211

There are some ENUM gateways in Germany. You can dial a landline phone number and you will get a new ENUM dial tone. Many people have plans which give them unlimited or very cheap calls from their mobile to landlines, so you can call call from your handset in Germany to a SIP address in China virtually free.

Guess what ... Some network operators recently started to simply block those access numbers. To make it a bit more complete, they also blocked some other services such as calling card access numbers, phone conferencing services and Podcast to Phone services.

User's of those kind of services have complained to the regulator, who didn't feel like saying anything about this. And given my understanding EU telco regulation (I can't speak for other parts of the world here) I wonder if the use of a regular geographic landline number to provide a gateway to VoIP targets would at all be in line with telecommunication laws of if this has just been tolerated in the past, as many things had been tolerated and are strictly enforced now.

If it were the US or Canada the regulators would not care as user controlled end to end VoIP is specifically considered an Information service and unregulated. The use of the NANP phone number is irrelevant. Remember there are two form of ENUM .. the 'classic ENUM" of RFC 3761 and e164.arpa and the carrier ENUM which are private instantiations of enum trees using the technology of 3761. Carrier ENUM which is essentially a replacement for SS7 and Global Title Translation is doing just fine and deploying rapidly for applications like MMS/SMS routing etc in carrier networks.

If you want ENUM acceptance, bring the subject up with the EU. They gave the GSM operators trouble re their roaming charged; they may also do something about ENUM.

Well since the GSM-A is organizing a private ENUM service for its operators the Commission may well have something to say about that. BTW any speculation on whether Vivian Reading is to be renominated as the EU telecom's regulator?

Regards, Torsten

Hi all, 2009/6/24 Carsten Schiefner <enumvoipsip.cs@schiefner.de>:

Richard Shockey wrote:

...

Remember there are two form of ENUM .. the 'classic ENUM" of RFC 3761 and e164.arpa and the carrier ENUM which are private instantiations of enum trees using the technology of 3761. Carrier ENUM which is essentially a replacement for SS7 and Global Title Translation is doing just fine and deploying rapidly for applications like MMS/SMS routing etc in carrier networks.

IMHO this just cannot be stressed too much. Actually, Rui's whole set of questions needs to be separately applied to both flavours; e.g. "Do users understand it and are willing to pay for it? Do companies understand it and are willing to pay for it?" wrt. Infra ENUM puts operators up as users and/or companies.

(companies <> operators) (companies = ENUM user companies) I know that there is infra-structure ENUM. My work will be on user ENUM though. The infrastructure ENUM is here to stay, it is being used on several countryies, companies and operators to route calls outside the SS7 system. These are private ENUM trees, in fact, there isn't an infrastructure worldwide/universal ENUM for operators. This may happen, but I believe that there is no drive to it on the "old" PSTN networks. On IMS, ENUM is part of the ecosystem. I wonder if there is the "vision" to integrate the several ENUM trees. I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of ENUM. And if it is so hard, is it worth it? For me it is... the Internet is user driven, ENUM may provide this shift of paradigm on the Voice (and other) services. User ENUM will pushes governments, regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm. I think that detach the e164 number from the PSTN Voice service is the first step. The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree and to terminate the call through their own gateways to the Internet, if ENUM returns a valid address. After that, the door is open. Once users get numbers detached from the Voice Service, new services will be available, for sure. Users are very innovative, and new users/usages will submerge. VoIP bases services will be the frist (marketing, IVR, podcasts, ...), but others will follow. Will it be cool to have a number to access your website, I don't know... but why not.

A first idea of an answer might be heavily related to the interconnection and termination regime in a certain country as well as the (non-) existence of number portability - and how this is technically done.

What are the termination regimes available world wide? Found some: - bill and keep (US) - cost based (access) (?) - calling party pays (Europe) Thank you all, Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hello Torsten, It is cheap for Skype / other operators to use ENUM, where possible, for outgoing calls. They can charge their clients for the normal rate, but save a few cents (on long calls). We are currently looking into ENUM and are planning to start using ENUM (starting with outgoing calls and incoming will follow soon if everything goes as planned). If for example a big telco starts using ENUM for landlines it would be great start. A weak point for ENUM is that you need an ENUM domain per number and these are not really used and at the moment to expensive compared to the savings. With kind regards, Mark Scholten -----Original Message----- From: enum-wg-admin@ripe.net [mailto:enum-wg-admin@ripe.net] On Behalf Of Torsten Schlabach Sent: maandag 29 juni 2009 18:13 To: Rui Ribeiro Cc: enum-wg@ripe.net Subject: Re: [enum-wg] ENUM Adoption - Does a business case matter? Hi Rui!

I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of ENUM.

Yes, and IMO it's the only flavor for which the public cares. I couldn't care less if my Telco operator is using SS7, an internal ENUM tree or a flat text file to lookup the target of my call as long as I have no influence over it.

User ENUM will pushes governments, regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm.

Yes, but how? One possibly extremely successful method would be to convince Skype that they do ENUM lookups on their SkypeOut service and deliver the call via IP (and free of extra charge, of course) if there is a valid IP target returned or to offer a way to terminate skype: URLs as a means of SkypeIn. Both would boost ENUM! The only problem: SkypeIn and SkypeOut as they are are sources of revenue for Skype. As a smaller scale alternative ... (just coming to mind): Few people know that default SIP clients such as Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting) can make calls to ENUM enabled phone numbers without having to use a gateway at all. Maybe this needs a bit more promotion. Any volunteers to start a Phonebuntu distro? (I am serious, guys!)

The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree

I think they are doing that a lot, unfortunately. ;-) No, sorry, but I think here you don't say what you mean. I guess you meant to say: The second will be to "force" operators to *query* the ENUM tree I agree with you that - as much as I hate saying this - it will have to be the regulator who needs to so something about this. Unless someone could come up with a different compensation for the network operators for the lost revenue of IP termination. And network operators in that case are not just the good old PSTN / GSM telcos but 95% of all VoIP network operators, both open standards based and proprietary (think Skype). If you need any links in / information about German telco regulation, feel free to ask me. Regards, Torsten Rui Ribeiro schrieb:

Hi all,

2009/6/24 Carsten Schiefner <enumvoipsip.cs@schiefner.de>:

...

Richard Shockey wrote:

...

Remember there are two form of ENUM .. the 'classic ENUM" of RFC 3761 and e164.arpa and the carrier ENUM which are private instantiations of enum trees using the technology of 3761. Carrier ENUM which is essentially a replacement for SS7 and Global Title Translation is doing just fine and deploying rapidly for applications like MMS/SMS routing etc in carrier networks. IMHO this just cannot be stressed too much. Actually, Rui's whole set of questions needs to be separately applied to both flavours; e.g. "Do users understand it and are willing to pay for it? Do companies understand it and are willing to pay for it?" wrt. Infra ENUM puts operators up as users and/or companies.

(companies <> operators) (companies = ENUM user companies)

I know that there is infra-structure ENUM. My work will be on user ENUM though. The infrastructure ENUM is here to stay, it is being used on several countryies, companies and operators to route calls outside the SS7 system. These are private ENUM trees, in fact, there isn't an infrastructure worldwide/universal ENUM for operators. This may happen, but I believe that there is no drive to it on the "old" PSTN networks. On IMS, ENUM is part of the ecosystem. I wonder if there is the "vision" to integrate the several ENUM trees.

I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of ENUM. And if it is so hard, is it worth it? For me it is... the Internet is user driven, ENUM may provide this shift of paradigm on the Voice (and other) services. User ENUM will pushes governments, regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm. I think that detach the e164 number from the PSTN Voice service is the first step. The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree and to terminate the call through their own gateways to the Internet, if ENUM returns a valid address.

After that, the door is open. Once users get numbers detached from the Voice Service, new services will be available, for sure. Users are very innovative, and new users/usages will submerge. VoIP bases services will be the frist (marketing, IVR, podcasts, ...), but others will follow. Will it be cool to have a number to access your website, I don't know... but why not.

...

A first idea of an answer might be heavily related to the interconnection and termination regime in a certain country as well as the (non-) existence of number portability - and how this is technically done.

What are the termination regimes available world wide?

Found some: - bill and keep (US) - cost based (access) (?) - calling party pays (Europe)

Thank you all,

Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hi all! On the price disucssion: ENUM entries are free of charge in Germany as well as in Bulgaria. Not that it helped a lot ... Regards, Torsten Rui Ribeiro schrieb:

Hi Mark, Hi all,

...

It is cheap for Skype / other operators to use ENUM, where possible, for outgoing calls. They can charge their clients for the normal rate, but save a few cents (on long calls).

I agree with this. I believe that skype doesn't support it because it will damage their own network value more that it would add. They will connect to ENUM when the size of the tree gets "larger". But they will fight til the end... I'm sure.

...

We are currently looking into ENUM and are planning to start using ENUM (starting with outgoing calls and incoming will follow soon if everything goes as planned).

Excelent. Look at other trees also. In Portugal there are/will be soon more thousands of numbers available on nrenum.net. The NREN is commited to ENUM, but since there isn't any advance from the regulator... a solution had to be persued. nrenum.net is also being used in other countries (10!).

...

If for example a big telco starts using ENUM for landlines it would be great start.

That is the "critical mass" that I was talking about.

...

A weak point for ENUM is that you need an ENUM domain per number and these are not really used and at the moment to expensive compared to the savings.

Do you have prices. I've found the Austrian case and it goes about 20cents/month per each ENUM domain/number. Do you have more prices, from other countries?

What about registrars? I've found several types of those. (types = diferent types of companies). There are hardware makers that make iPBX boxes and "offer" ENUM registers to their clients bundled on the montlhy fee for support of the hardware. If you charge 5€/number for suport, you can pay 0,15€ to ENUM...

Thank you all,

Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hi Mark!

They can charge their clients for the normal rate,

But then the whole point of VoIP termination is gone. Ok, it would be possible to charge them less. For example, Afghanistan (yes, some people call there) is still a comparatively expensive country for termination; 30 EUR-Cent / minute on average. I could come up with some other examples. If Skype would decide to charge only the < 2 EUR-Cent per Minute they would charge for calls for example to the German fixed network in case the call goes to an ENUM target, that might be a fair compromise, as I think their effort is comparable. For a termination in VoIP it means th operator needs to forward the traffic to the next Internet Exchange. The same would be true when it comes to traditional telco's. I said this before. I they charged a call to an ENUM target at the same rate as a call to a national landline or to a network internal target, I think that would be as fair as acceptable.

A weak point for ENUM is that you need an ENUM domain per number and these are not really used and at the moment to expensive compared to the savings.

Expensive? I never paid a single cent for any ENUM domain. Not in Germans, not in Bulgaria. I haven't used ENUM in other places of the world. Regards, Torsten Stream Service schrieb:

Hello Torsten,

It is cheap for Skype / other operators to use ENUM, where possible, for outgoing calls. They can charge their clients for the normal rate, but save a few cents (on long calls). We are currently looking into ENUM and are planning to start using ENUM (starting with outgoing calls and incoming will follow soon if everything goes as planned).

If for example a big telco starts using ENUM for landlines it would be great start.

A weak point for ENUM is that you need an ENUM domain per number and these are not really used and at the moment to expensive compared to the savings.

With kind regards,

Mark Scholten

-----Original Message----- From: enum-wg-admin@ripe.net [mailto:enum-wg-admin@ripe.net] On Behalf Of Torsten Schlabach Sent: maandag 29 juni 2009 18:13 To: Rui Ribeiro Cc: enum-wg@ripe.net Subject: Re: [enum-wg] ENUM Adoption - Does a business case matter?

Hi Rui!

...

I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of ENUM.

Yes, and IMO it's the only flavor for which the public cares. I couldn't care less if my Telco operator is using SS7, an internal ENUM tree or a flat text file to lookup the target of my call as long as I have no influence over it.

...

User ENUM will pushes governments, regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm.

Yes, but how?

One possibly extremely successful method would be to convince Skype that they do ENUM lookups on their SkypeOut service and deliver the call via IP (and free of extra charge, of course) if there is a valid IP target returned or to offer a way to terminate skype: URLs as a means of SkypeIn. Both would boost ENUM! The only problem: SkypeIn and SkypeOut as they are are sources of revenue for Skype.

As a smaller scale alternative ... (just coming to mind):

Few people know that default SIP clients such as Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting) can make calls to ENUM enabled phone numbers without having to use a gateway at all. Maybe this needs a bit more promotion. Any volunteers to start a Phonebuntu distro? (I am serious, guys!)

...

The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree

I think they are doing that a lot, unfortunately. ;-)

No, sorry, but I think here you don't say what you mean. I guess you meant to say:

The second will be to "force" operators to *query* the ENUM tree

I agree with you that - as much as I hate saying this - it will have to be the regulator who needs to so something about this. Unless someone could come up with a different compensation for the network operators for the lost revenue of IP termination. And network operators in that case are not just the good old PSTN / GSM telcos but 95% of all VoIP network operators, both open standards based and proprietary (think Skype).

If you need any links in / information about German telco regulation, feel free to ask me.

Regards, Torsten

Rui Ribeiro schrieb:

...

Hi all,

2009/6/24 Carsten Schiefner <enumvoipsip.cs@schiefner.de>:

...

Richard Shockey wrote:

...

Remember there are two form of ENUM .. the 'classic ENUM" of RFC 3761 and e164.arpa and the carrier ENUM which are private instantiations of enum trees using the technology of 3761. Carrier ENUM which is essentially a replacement for SS7 and Global Title Translation is doing just fine and deploying rapidly for applications like MMS/SMS routing etc in carrier networks. IMHO this just cannot be stressed too much. Actually, Rui's whole set of questions needs to be separately applied to both flavours; e.g. "Do users understand it and are willing to pay for it? Do companies understand it and are willing to pay for it?" wrt. Infra ENUM puts operators up as users and/or companies. (companies <> operators) (companies = ENUM user companies)

I know that there is infra-structure ENUM. My work will be on user ENUM though. The infrastructure ENUM is here to stay, it is being used on several countryies, companies and operators to route calls outside the SS7 system. These are private ENUM trees, in fact, there isn't an infrastructure worldwide/universal ENUM for operators. This may happen, but I believe that there is no drive to it on the "old" PSTN networks. On IMS, ENUM is part of the ecosystem. I wonder if there is the "vision" to integrate the several ENUM trees.

I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of ENUM. And if it is so hard, is it worth it? For me it is... the Internet is user driven, ENUM may provide this shift of paradigm on the Voice (and other) services. User ENUM will pushes governments, regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm. I think that detach the e164 number from the PSTN Voice service is the first step. The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree and to terminate the call through their own gateways to the Internet, if ENUM returns a valid address.

After that, the door is open. Once users get numbers detached from the Voice Service, new services will be available, for sure. Users are very innovative, and new users/usages will submerge. VoIP bases services will be the frist (marketing, IVR, podcasts, ...), but others will follow. Will it be cool to have a number to access your website, I don't know... but why not.

...

A first idea of an answer might be heavily related to the interconnection and termination regime in a certain country as well as the (non-) existence of number portability - and how this is technically done. What are the termination regimes available world wide?

Found some: - bill and keep (US) - cost based (access) (?) - calling party pays (Europe)

Thank you all,

Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hi!

2nd - the "new IMS network" that will appear in a couple of years.

Hopefully. Right now, for example, I don't now of anyone who could offer me end-to-end QoS over the Internet. I may be wrong, but I see no movement at all in that direction. Well, maybe in other places of the world? I am speaking about consumer trunks here and I am speaking about the Internet, not about offers for corporate networks and QoS which works as long as the traffic stays with one carrier.

Yes. What kind of information/pressure can be applied to the regulator to force the ENUM querying by the operators? Open the market to small operators? Detach numbers from landline/mobile service? What can be the drive to this change?

"Open the market to small [innovative] operators?" would typically be an argument that the regulator might listen to. Though the argument would have to come from one of those small, innovative operators. Critical mass is definitely an argument, no doubt. Of course, one could think about making attempts to generate a critcial mass outside the PSTN world at first to have a good argument then for the PSTN operators to give their users a reasonable access to that cloud. But then I am stuck again. IMO there are two types of telephony: 1. PC based telephony. This is the people who spend their lives (or a major portion of it) in front of computers. Now if I want to use a computer to make and receive phone calls, would I care about ENUM or rather call directly to SIP addresses which are so much easier to remember and easy to type on a computer? 2. Handset based telephony. This is whenever I *don't* have a computer, i.e. on the move, where I don't have my own computer that has the proper Internet connection and VoIP software (in the office of my employer, in the university, ...). Handset based telephony means GSM in more and more cases. Where it's not GSM but landline, still, it's those devices with a keypad that has *01234567890# and on which it would be quite cumbersome to type an alphanumeric address. This is what ENUM was made for IIUC. When we speak about GSM, the operator is the only one who can do anything about ENUM. When we speak about landlines (fixed phones, DECT phones) then there is a whole dilemma again. I just bought a snom m3. A genuinely designed VoIP DECT phone. First of all, it cost 3-5 times the price of a simple ATA / PSTN DECT phone, approx. 150 EUR versus offers starting at 29,00 EUR and below. And guess if it has ENUM support; even optionally? I mean, what scares me as that even the people who make VoIP don't seem to believe in ENUM at all. snom could market this telephone saying: Call everywhere in the world for free. (*) With (* = if the called party has an ENUM domain.) Why don't they do that? Because they didn't have the idea or because they don't want to. (Anyone from snom, AVM, LinkSys, on this list?) One could build a PC app which uses ENUM, but (see above) I would have a problem explaining someone why she should use it and not use SIP straight or ... and that's what 95% of the people around me do ... Skype. I am out of ideas. Sorry. Regards, Torsten Rui Ribeiro schrieb:

Hi Torsten,

...

...

User ENUM will pushes governments, regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm. One possibly extremely successful method would be to convince Skype that they do ENUM lookups on their SkypeOut service and deliver the call via IP (and free of extra charge, of course) if there is a valid IP target returned or to offer a way to terminate skype: URLs as a means of SkypeIn. Both would boost ENUM! The only problem: SkypeIn and SkypeOut as they are are sources of revenue for Skype.

What I see in this situation is that Skype is assumed as a non "public protocol" firm. Everything about skype is "closed", while the internet, ENUM and SIP are on the other way. You have to see also that the value of ENUM is the same as Skype, the size of the network. More the users, more the value of the network. I believe that Skype has already reached it's critical mass, while ENUM didn't. Why should skype "give a hand" to ENUM? Will it have some kind of "business case"? Any advantage in it? Don't think so.

If skype starts to support SIP, then ENUM has a chance... does any one knows if they will support SIP soon?

...

...

The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree I think they are doing that a lot, unfortunately. ;-)

LoL! (good thinking...)

...

No, sorry, but I think here you don't say what you mean. I guess you meant to say:

The second will be to "force" operators to *query* the ENUM tree

I agree with you that - as much as I hate saying this - it will have to be the regulator who needs to so something about this.

Yes. What kind of information/pressure can be applied to the regulator to force the ENUM querying by the operators? Open the market to small operators? Detach numbers from landline/mobile service? What can be the drive to this change?

...

Unless someone could come up with a different compensation for the network operators for the lost revenue of IP termination.

I really don't think that there will be any "lost of revenue". You have to think in two ways:

1st - the "traditional PSTN network" that was up until 2004. The cost/revenue model was based on circuits fees and voice calls. The operator received per call. The interconnect rates were high, and the business model was there for decades...

2nd - the "new IMS network" that will appear in a couple of years. The cost/revenue model will/is based on broadband access, bandwidth, quality of service, while voice will be just a commodity. It will bundled... in fact, they will be happy not to pay anything to interconnect carriers to deliver the call. More the users with ENUM, more the revenue (less the cost) for the call initiator.

The problem is the present... the 1st model is moving towards the 2nd and no one knows/wants to take the first step.

...

If you need any links in / information about German telco regulation, feel free to ask me.

Yes, I need some information. I will contact you personally. Thanks.

Thank you all,

Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Ray.Bellis@nominet.org.uk wrote:

Yesterday, I wrote:

...

I have written an ENUM Client for Android which is due for imminent release.

This application is now available for download from:

http://code.google.com/p/enumdroid/

It's also in the Google Market, under Applications -> Communication.

Installed :-) -- Regards Jon -- Jon Farmer Voice Technical Lead Entanet International Ltd

Nice app, but?

It?s designed to UK dialing style? Instead of just copying the ?tel:? numbers from DNS in the format as they appear (like +48606?.) it replaces ?+? with ?**? ? this doesn?t work in Poland?

The '**' prefix is the app's ENUM bypass prefix. The app has to add the prefix to tel: URIs (and then later strip it off again) so that they don't go back through the ENUM lookup when you dial them. Can you please let me know [offlist] what number you were trying to dial? Ray

Bypass yes, but double asterisk is widely recognized as international dialing code (instead of ?+?), but not for example in Poland for mobile carriers, ?**? doesn?t work?

Ah, interesting, I didn't know that! I'll pick an alternate bypass string (or make it configurable) thanks, Ray -- Ray Bellis, MA(Oxon) MIET Senior Researcher in Advanced Projects, Nominet e: ray@nominet.org.uk, t: +44 1865 332211

Hi all,

* Benefit and effort are on two different ends. If *I* maintain an ENUM entry for my phone number which points so a SIP address, *you* can possibly call me cheaper. So I need to maintain my entry, you have the benefit. Only the small number of situations where I as the called party care about what the calling party has to pay for the call will just not make the case;

In economy this is identified as an "externality". Often the solution to this kind of problem is the investement of the state in order to create a "critical mass" for it to grow it self. It was the way the road, highways, railroad and telco started... Here I have to refeer to the "Metcalfe's law" where: "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

* It is hard for the calling party to make an ENUM call.

I agree... that's why I agree with your last sentence: "Put up a regulation which makes an ENUM lookup on an outbound call mandatory for operators; both fixed line as well as mobile." The problem here is... isn't this too much? Why should the state force this kind of "tecnological shift"? A few years ago I've been architecting a nation wide voip network. One thing that came very evident is that there would not be the need to create VoIP gateways to users/companies if the operators would place and receive calls from the VoIP world. Imagine... a farm of gateways in each operator, and that's it! no one had to "mess up" with iPBX with T1/E1 connected to it, no ISDN, no PSTN. Just clean VoIP (outside the operators).

1. Because the providers who give customers the devices are not interested in their customers reaching IP targets free of charge; they will rather want to charge for the call. So they might execute some influence on the makers of those boxes not to put a simple checkmark "Do ENUM lookup on outbound calls" in there.

And that isn't only on the user end equipments. There is a known feature (ENUM support), that isn't documented, on the software of the leading router company. It is available if you are willing to "dig trough" the CLI. But this is de "conspiracy" theory. I would like to avoid this line of thought. The "economic" view is... if there isn't value in the market, then there is no feature, because, if it were, the market would provide the feature. I believe that this is a feature that not many are willing to pay for...

2. There is little pressure from consumers as ENUM is an entirely unknown concept outside VoIP wizards. Even lots of people who do know what VoIP is don't know or don't care about ENUM.

That's true. That is why I wonder if ENUM is something that can be marketable. What features could you associate with it in order to the user come to the operator and say: "I need ENUM"! Is VoIP still the only application for ENUM? Does ENUM is still on time with the new telco paradigm (PSTN vs. IMS)? Was it overrun by events? Does it still make sense? For how long? Is there any study that demonstrate that users prefer (or not) numbers over URI's? Thank you all, Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hi Otmar! First of all: Thanks for some new aspects your brought to the discussion. I didn't know that ZapMail thing before. I think the VoIP as a product versus VoIP as a service thing pretty much hits it. Just I have to heavily disagree with what Clay Shirky wrote. VoIP as a product (buy a device, connect, talk to people) has never ever worked. Not all all. Any this might be the problem after all. If I could buy a VoIP appliance in the next electronics store which would allow me to start talking to other people who bought an appliance which uses the same protocol and if this appliance would be cheap and required no but a trivial configuration, that would be it. For sure. But reality is that the VoIP operators behave exactly like any traditional telco. VoIP as a service. You have to subscribe (ok, the subscription fee might be 0,00), there is a tariff plan, calls are only free on the same network or on a small number of interconnected networks. What I always wondered is why people do accept that. Would you accept an ISP which delivers email only to accounts on it's own and on selected partner networks and who will print and snail mail or fax if the mail leaves their own network. This is excactly what happens if I am with VoIP operator A and I make a call to VoIP operator B. Unless two two have a peering agreement by chance, the call will go VoIP -> PSTN Gateway -> PSTN Gateway -> VoIP. How stupid is that? Now the question to me is: What the hell do I need a VoIP operator for? I can make a device listen for incoming calls on an IP address on a given port. If we take IPv6, I can have a fixed IP address which will even be entirely independent of my ISP and it will even be mobile. So I could just print my IPv6 address on my business card and possibly announce one or two alternative protocols under which I will accept calls on that address. No operator needed. If I want to call someone, I can make my device open a socket to the other party's IP address and there we go. This would be VoIP as a product. So what's holding us back from just doing that? This will not solve the ENUM adoption problem, but looking at IPv6 based end-to-end telephony, ENUM looks to me like a solution in search of a problem. In case it would happen that ... say as many people as are using Skype today ... would use standard protocol IPv6 based voice over Internet I am sure this would make the telco's move about how to make that cloud reachable from their networks. And there ENUM would be back in the game, mapping a phone number to a protocol:IPv6address record. Remains one yet unsolved problem: Many people use mobile phones today. Where do I get a IPv6 address over a GSM network? On the network level: I could use any other data over 3G / 3.5G flatrate (available in Germany starting at 14,95 / month with no contractual obligations), just most GSM operators *tolerate* VoIP at most while reserving the right to cut it off at any time. And of course, one would need a handset which would be capable. In that case, Android might be a solution. Remains the problem that the latency of 3G networks isn't all that VoIP friendly. Not that it doesn't work at all, but it remains a 2nd best option. I have to come back to my call for the regulator: Why are fixed line operators required to open their last mile up to competitors while GSM operators aren't? Regards, Torsten Otmar Lendl schrieb:

Rui Ribeiro wrote:

...

Hi All,

I'm new to the list, so this will be my first post... I'm making a master thesis on ENUM and its adoption (or non adoption). My background is 100% technical, so I'm "a believer" that ENUM is like a swiss knife to handle all kind of addressing problems between E-164 numbering and the new Internet URI based services. It can solve many other problems and can, even, be the base/enabler to new services.

But I wonder if this is the pragmatic view that we should have about new things.

What if ENUM is getting "hard" to deploy because it can't provide a business model to its "stake holders"?

This is indeed the problem.

I'm a techie myself, but I've learned the hard way that technological superiority is pretty much useless by itself. Unless the business incentives and the marketing align, you will not get your superior idea adopted by the marketplace (or even standardized).

Actually, your subject should be "ENUM Adoption - Does anything except the business case matter at all?".

So, what chains shackled user-ENUM to its current subsistence?

Some comments:

* User ENUM is a technology for voice as a product, and not voice as a service. See http://www.shirky.com/writings/zapmail.html

* See also the idea behind http://www.phonegnome.com/ More below.

* SIP is a mess. Basic calling is bad enough, given the troubles with NATs, Firewalls and other middleboxes, but interoperability for more advanced phone features is terrible.

If you link average PBXs, Asterisk installations, ... you will get spurious errors. Sudden one-way audio. Dropped calls on handovers, ...

* Price erosion. The current prices for regular telephony are so low that working around the telcos doesn't make as much sense as it used to.

* Call pricing these days is by far dominated by termination fees, not geography and distance.

So: optimizing the route will give you minimal benefits compared to bypassing the toll-gate at the entrance of the terminating operator.

* There is NO incentive for a carrier to accept anonymous SIP calls from the Internet. Quite to the contrary. Termination fees are a significant part of their revenue (not in all countries!). Less hassle with DoS, Spit and legal issues.

Opening up SIP ingress point robs carriers their "termination monopoly" with regards to their own customers. Bad idea for them.

* There is little incentive for a carrier to do ENUM resolution on outbound calls. Why? All the ENUM marketing says, "make free calls using ENUM", thus the customer won't accept fees on such calls.

Bottom line for the carrier: * no enum: charge wholesale price + x %, no technical challenges * enum: charge nothing. Happy debugging SIP with whatever software the other side has mis-configured.

All he gets from outbound ENUM is a marketing boost.

* What might actually work is when PBX vendors get together and add ENUM to their boxes and certify that the interconnection between these boxes actually _works_.

That's a bit like the phonegnome mentioned above.

This doesn't quite work with plain user ENUM though, as there is no mechanism there to signal that you only want to talk to certified ENUM-aware PBXs.

I've written up some ideas on how you could enhance ENUM / SIP to do that, see http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lendl-speermint-federations-03 (+referenced docs).

* There certainly will be uses for ENUM in the carrier space, though from what I see I doubt that they will manage to build the single I-ENUM tree necessary to drive the global, optimal, multi-hop VoIP routing we actually need.

If you want to read up on what b0rkeness the IETF is currently hatching, have a look at http://tools.ietf.org/wg/drinks/

(Lest that I'm accused of not offering alternative ideas, see http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lendl-speermint-background-02 )

/ol

Hi all, Thanks for your unvaluable feedback!

...

Unless two two have a peering agreement by chance, the call will go VoIP -> PSTN Gateway -> PSTN Gateway -> VoIP. How stupid is that? One simple answer: it works. Anything else currently does not work (at least, from a practical point of view).

It is stupid, but needed... many operators (even VoIP) don't allow to go outside their own "SIP Island". What could be the drive to "open" their island to "overseas" conections?

Surprisingly enough, MS seems to be pushing heavily towards reliable public VoIP (what they are calling "ocs federation" I believe).  They could benefit from ENUM.

The "ocs federation" will not support ENUM, i'm sure. OCS uses some kind of SIP, but not really interoperable with "off the shelf, white brand, SIP systems". In fact you have to have a gateway to SIP... from my testing, a few months ago, it doesn't allow to make calls using URI's outside the federation and the numbers are always routed through the gateways (SIP, ISDN or others). It seems like a way to make "archipelagos", than to provide a global public VoIP system. Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hi Mark, Let's say that I'm a user (not a company, even less an operator). I have a SIP phone that supports ENUM direcly (it queries the golden tree, understand the registers flags, queries the DNS based on the URI, and makes the call). ENUM redirects to a user that is registred on your server. Would you accept the calls? (note... there are no costs neither a internconection contract). What if it was the other way around? Would you redirect your calls to a URI with whom you don't have any relashionship? Would you even trie to deliver the call, and redirect it through PSTN if failed?

We would be happy to create SIP connections to other VoIP operators. But it totally depends on the interconnection costs (if there would be no fee to call to SIP accounts on their server, they could call for free to SIP accounts on our platform ofcourse).

Who applies to "voip operaton" on your view? Could a non profit organization with thousands of numbers? [as NREN, Universitie, Hospital network, ...] Could it be a profit organization? (bank, insurance company, ...) Or only a "operator" fully registred. What is your view on initiatives like e164.org and nrenum.net? Do/Would you deliver calls to destinations pointed by these two trees? Rui Ribeiro racribeiro@gmail.com

Hi, Torsten Schlabach wrote:

Hi Otmar!

First of all: Thanks for some new aspects your brought to the discussion. I didn't know that ZapMail thing before.

I think the VoIP as a product versus VoIP as a service thing pretty much hits it. Just I have to heavily disagree with what Clay Shirky wrote.

VoIP as a product (buy a device, connect, talk to people) has never ever worked. Not all all. Any this might be the problem after all.

Correct. This is in contrast to email, where you just * get internet connectivity * buy / get a mailserver software (commercial or open source) * get a domain and set the MX records and you're a full participant in the worldwide email ecosystem.

If I could buy a VoIP appliance in the next electronics store which would allow me to start talking to other people who bought an appliance which uses the same protocol and if this appliance would be cheap and required no but a trivial configuration, that would be it. For sure.

An appliance alone would be not enough, as you still need the domain for plain SIP and/or the enum delegation for E.164 based calling. But still, why doesn't this happen the same way as it does for email? In my opinion, the free SIP community never managed to get over the Metcalfe's-law bump in the adoption curve as compared to the huge Metcalfe-worth of the existing PSTN. Any phone that can call the billions of existing PSTN phones is worth so much more than any VoIP device that can only reach others using the same technology. It isn't worth deploying an isolated, new telephony network. (Even the IM-based phone networks are IM networks foremost and talking is only a secondary usage. IMHO.) What is another difference to email? * Ad-hoc, settlement-free interconnection. There is no need to sign contracts to transmit email and thus no money passes hands. That's not the way the PSTN operates and as I explained before, no sane PSTN operator will want to be the first to change it.

But reality is that the VoIP operators behave exactly like any traditional telco. VoIP as a service.

Because you need them as a gateway to the PSTN. You don't have the contracts to terminate calls directly to BT, FT, ATT, DT, Sprint, ... so you have to buy a this service from someone. My private box can send email to all these big operators. My SIP proxy cannot talk to their networks. That's the difference. Free SIP service wasn't the problem. Just as there is GMX, gmail, Yahoo, hotmail & other which give you a free email address, there were services that gave you a free SIP address. (iptel.org, FreeWorldDialup, ...)

You have to subscribe (ok, the subscription fee might be 0,00), there is a tariff plan, calls are only free on the same network or on a small number of interconnected networks.

What I always wondered is why people do accept that.

As a single person, they have no choice.

Would you accept an ISP which delivers email only to accounts on it's own and on selected partner networks and who will print and snail mail or fax if the mail leaves their own network. This is excactly what happens if I am with VoIP operator A and I make a call to VoIP operator B. Unless two two have a peering agreement by chance, the call will go VoIP -> PSTN Gateway -> PSTN Gateway -> VoIP. How stupid is that?

It's not stupid. It's just a different economic stable state. The forces who protect the status quo are stronger than the forces who want change. Both interconnection schemes (pstn-type settlement and email-like ad-hoc settlement-free) are stable states. Any single operator cannot change the game. ---- Side-remark: it's instructive to look a the satellite pay-tv markets all over Europe: There are some countries where pay-TV emerged as the dominant solution (France, UK) and then there is Germany, where free, ad-supported TV basically won the game. Any new entrant into that market has to go along with the dominant model. The typical German viewer will not sign a contract, pay money, get the decryption equipment just for the privilege of watching just one more channel. For a French, the infrastructure and habit is there and people probably won't tolerate the ads. Two stable states. ----

Now the question to me is: What the hell do I need a VoIP operator for?

I can make a device listen for incoming calls on an IP address on a given port. If we take IPv6, I can have a fixed IP address which will even be entirely independent of my ISP and it will even be mobile.

Sorry, no. ipv6 has nothing to do with getting everybody a static ip-address. Quite the contrary, ipv6 was designed to make switching ip-addresses when changing location / ISP / ... easier than it is for v4. What you really want is a domain name which points to your current ip address. ipv6 allows you to get rid of NAT. ----

In case it would happen that ... say as many people as are using Skype today ... would use standard protocol IPv6 based voice over Internet I am sure this would make the telco's move about how to make that cloud reachable from their networks. And there ENUM would be back in the game, mapping a phone number to a protocol:IPv6address record.

Not at all. The current setup where the voip-users pay money to some voip-operator which then hands termination-fees to the telcos suits the telcos just fine. What advantage would they get if they would allow direct calls towards them from individual, anonymous voip-users? /ol -- // Otmar Lendl <lendl@nic.at>, T: +43 1 5056416 - 33, F: - 933 //