Big response to DENIC’s second one-day ENUM event

For the second time, DENIC, the .de registry, has organized an information event concerning the ongoing trials with ENUM, a new technology that bridges the gap between telecommunications and the Internet. ENUM and the ENUM services are going to open up the whole world of communications to users through their existing call numbers. Around 120 participants attended the event, which was held on 16 March 2004 in Frankfurt, They included DENIC representatives and members, telecommunications suppliers and Internet service providers and they had the opportunity to hear the very latest about developments in this field.

All the experts at the gathering agreed on one point: ENUM has now grown out of its experimental stage and is poised to be used by the public at large. The technical prerequisites have now all been met. Application software for voice-over-IP telephony and the necessary servers are now available at acceptable prices. Various demonstrations easily convinced the participants of that too. There are continuing activities in Germanyand at European level aimed at standardization and ensuring the perfect interaction between applications and items of hardware from different manufacturers.

That ENUM is now robust enough for everyday use has been proven in various test installations. A good example is the University of the Saarlandin Saarbrücken, where several hundred students and employees are already using the new technology to telephone via the Internet. Calls originating in the conventional fixed network are also being correctly forwarded via ENUM and the Internet, provided the computers and recipients have the necessary programs installed.

Deutsche Telekom has now decided to give ENUM a high priority. It is intending to do more in the field of validation and to set up a validation agency for ENUM registrars. A crucial aspect for ENUM is guaranteeing that the entry for a particular telephone number can only be made by that number’s subscriber. This involves a process known as validation, in which the identity of the subscriber and his/her entitlement to the number are established and later verified at regular intervals. It is possible, after all, for telephone numbers and the subscribers holding them to change quickly.

While the ENUM trials are still running, it is possible to link all normal German telephone numbers to ENUM domains. This can easily lead to difficulties in Internet telephony, in that, contrary to the fixed network, numbers no longer have an immutable geographic allocation. Local calls (made without a long-distance dialling code) can thus easily go astray. For this reason, the German Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Posts (RegTP) is contemplating the introduction of a new number rangefor this application with the dialling code 032, which will then be nationally based and no longer based on local call areas. A similarly defined number rangewould then be logical for the use of voice-over-IP services too. Before it can be introduced, however, there are still many questions of detail to be clarified, which is why the regulatory authority has not yet announced any date for its launch.

The presentations made at the information event and the other accompanying documentation are soon to be made publicly available (in German).

Background to ENUM

The term “ENUM” is derived from “telephone number mapping”. It is a protocol defining how to link together resources from the telecommunications and Internet spheres. It sets out a rule by means of which a telephone number can be uniquely mapped to a domain. This domain can then be used for the identification of various communication services, such as telefaxes, cell phones, voice-mail systems, e-mail addresses, IP-telephony addresses, web pages or call diverts.

The idea behind ENUM is simple yet ingenious. Instead of having to grapple with lots of different numbers and addresses for private, office and mobile phones as well as telefax, e-mail and websites, which demand a really big effort just to keep them up-to-date, it is going to be possible in future to enter just one single number per person in our address books. Making sure that each communication is routed to the appropriate output device is then going to be handled by the entries in the ENUM name server.

The linking of telephone numbers and Internet resources is leading to the creation of totally new services. One basic service is finding an Internet terminal with telephony capability from a conventional telephone. As an option, it is possible with ENUM to draw callers’ attention to alternative communication channels that are actually available. If no Internet device with telephony capability is available, the caller will be able to select an appropriate alternative from the list of additional applications presented.

Further general information about ENUM and specific information about the trial operation at DENIC are available on DENIC’s website.