About Electronic Number Mapping
Electronic number mapping (ENUM) is the mapping of a telephone number from a public switched telephone to internet functionalities. The ENUM Working Party prepared a report in May 2006 on issues for New Zealand telecommunication carriers and their customers, and to recommend the next steps forward for the TCF. ENUM would essentially provide access to a wide range of contact details for an organisation or person, thus easing introduction of services such as VoIP. It could be used to unify numbering across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and an Internet Protocol (IP) network.
ENUM Report
A report on ENUM was completed by the ENUM Working party and presented to the TCF board in May 2006. A summary of the report is as follows:
Internationally ENUM has evolved rapidly in both the standards arena and in its industry forms in the 12 months since Internet New Zealand’s report first mooted a New Zealand User ENUM trial. Standards first ratified two years ago have been edited and updated, and are about to be ratified. Industry forms have morphed through experience gained in overseas trials and in recognition that ENUM’s various flavours need to coexist, and may need to cooperate in some way. Additional topics such as VoIP peering have emerged that may alter the ENUM landscape. And, as yet there is no unified approach on or understanding of ENUM between the internet IETF and ITU / telecommunications communities.
Overseas, some findings from trials are that no known business case exists for ENUM and that privacy concerns have restricted many trials to VoIP only i.e. no PSTN. From an offshore regulatory standpoint, no regulation is in place or planned for ENUM in any of its forms. However, many overseas regulators are interested in, and in some countries actively involved in, ENUM.
The Internet New Zealand report dated April 2005 proposed a User ENUM trial of the type already performed in multiple countries. The ENUM Working Party’s conclusion is that, in its current form, this trial will not add anything to that which has not already been proven overseas. Nor will it address key concerns such as those found overseas and echoed by this Working Party.
The Working Party considers that, to progress ENUM, significant resource needs to be committed in three stages.
- Stage 1, before April 2007, should include active participation in international standards bodies and working parties relevant to ENUM and development of high level policy, principles, codes of practice, legal requirements including enforcement and customer requirements including privacy and define, if possible, a business case for ENUM.
- Stage 2 should, building on stage 1, determine the objectives, requirements and responsibilities for a trial and define architecture, registry / registrar models and other design requirements including interoperability and interconnection. This would aim to build on overseas experience. Refer to Section 12.5 for an example ENUM work plan to encompass stage 1-2.
- Stage 3 would be the actual trial at a yet to be determined date.
In the ENUM working party’s report to the TCF Board they recommended that further work needs to be undertaken developing policies and procedures before any ENUM trial could be undertaken.
The deliverables from this project would be:
A preliminary report that recommends whether or not work should continue (given it is a non-regulated service); and if the recommendation is that work should continue, the following pre-trial work will be undertaken by this Working Party:
- Code(s) setting out the policies, principles and processes involved in implementation and use of ENUM-enabled services for both trial and potential commercial implementation.
- Develop the business requirements for end users, legal and regulatory requirements for the ENUM trial;
- A report identifying the issues and risks for resolution / research to be undertaken prior to a trial.
- High level technical overview covering architecture, cost and objectives of the trial.
- Recommendation on whether or not to proceed with an ENUM trial.