[LINK] ENUM

[stephen loosley]

Hello there,

As noted in Adam Creed's regular update .. 

“ENUM seems destined ultimately to emerge as the most important new Internet platform since the World Wide Web.."

FYI: Companies Invite Service Providers, Applications Developers And Vendors To Participate In Trial To Simplify Networked Communications  http://www.enumworld.com/


Herndon, VA, September 26, 2000 –The proliferation of multiple networked devices and media poses major challenges for rapid personal and business communications. Recognizing market demand for the simplicity of one telephone number to communicate with multiple devices – such as, e-mail, fax machines, cell phones and pagers -- communications software and solutions provider Telcordia Technologies, Inc. and VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq:VRSN), the leading provider of Internet trust services, today announced an agreement under which [they] will jointly develop an ENUM directory and an open system trial based on the proposed ENUM standard. The trial system will be housed on the VeriSign Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure that handles more than one billion domain name queries per day.

The proposed ENUM standard, currently being considered by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), provides a framework for a global numbering system to map telephone numbers to other service addresses over the Internet. ENUM-based services would allow one telephone number to serve as a single point of contact for numerous communication media, from telephone to e-mail and from wireline to wireless. 

"The trial will bring us significantly closer to implementing a real-world ENUM model for consumers and businesses alike," said Richard Orriss, vice president and general manager of the Service Business and Management Group at Telcordia. "With ENUM fully realized, the business card of the future could list a single universal address, to which people could direct a phone call, an e-mail, a fax, or other communications. The result -- more efficient, simplified communication anywhere, around the globe."

As the full scope and potential of ENUM functionality and consumer use will ultimately be defined through the development of independent applications, the companies are inviting service providers, applications developers, and vendors to participate in the trial, which is scheduled to begin in late Q4 2000.

"The domain name system (DNS) provides the ideal housing for the ENUM trial," said Bruce Chovnick, general manager of VeriSign Global Registry Services. "We recognize the potential for the convergence of telephony and Internet communications and are pleased to be working with Telcordia toward the practical integration of the two technologies."

The Trial System

The ENUM project is the focal point of the convergence of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the Internet. Telcordia and VeriSign Global Registry Services together bring proven leadership in both of these domains.

Telcordia provides leading-edge service management systems globally to administer and update numbers for toll-free and local number portability services. Every toll-free call in the U.S. depends on Telcordia software, which has processed billions of toll-free calls without service interruption. This robust service management platform will be used to provide similar capabilities for the trial system.

The trial system will operate on the DNS infrastructure maintained by VeriSign Global Registry Services that handles the translation for more than 19 million domain names on the Internet, responding to more than one billion queries per day. Using this infrastructure will help result in rapid resolution of number-to-address mapping. Additionally, VeriSign is uniquely positioned as the leader in Internet security, which will play a critical role in ENUM-based services.

The trial, which will utilize a gateway through the ENUM resource site www.enumworld.com, will allow users to develop and exercise their applications for functionality and compatibility with the ENUM standard. To learn more about how to participate in the trial, system developers and service providers can visit www.enumworld.com or e-mail information@enumworld.com.


What Is ENUM? http://www.enumworld.com/

ENUM is the acronym adopted by the telephone numbering working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to describe a mechanism using the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) to map E.164 numbers to URLs. E.164 is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard that describes the format of telephone numbers used around the world. 

The eventual real-world uses of ENUM are not yet fully known and are dependent upon the development of service applications. One of the more prominent ideas is the establishment of a single contact number for individuals. This would, for example, allow the business card of the future to contain a single number rather than a long list of addresses for home phone, office phone, fax, cell phone, and email. Various services will use the Internet to translate that one number into service specific addresses. Some experts believe that ENUM has even broader potential. A recent article in Communications Week International described ENUM in these terms. 

“ENUM seems destined ultimately to emerge as the most important new Internet platform since the World Wide Web - perhaps even eclipsing it in long-range importance. A measure of its broad significance was the Internet standards speed record recently set by the initial adoption of the ENUM specification on the road to an Internet standard.”
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Happy trails ..
Stephen Loosley
www.stephen.hm