VoIP and ENUM

The Time is not right for ENUM - says the Telecommunications Carrier Forum (TCF). Not even for a trial.

The Telecommunications Carriers Forum has shot down InternetNZ's plans for a trial of Enum, a phone and Internet addressing system that could help bring low-cost Internet telephone calls into the mainstream.

The argument is very interesting:

A report by the industry body, which represents companies such as Vodafone, Telecom and TelstraClear, says Enum should be delayed till number portability is in place in April next year.

TCF chairman Malcolm Alexander says issues such as privacy and security need to be ironed out before a public trial begins. He also says building the Enum system would bleed personnel away from the TCF's number portability project, which is more important.

"Our priority is the delivery of number portability as per the deadline set by the telecommunications commissioner. The same people, the same engineers would have to do both."

Now the really funny issue here is that (Infrastructure) ENUM is the ideal solution for number portability. But instead of taking the opportunity that NZ is very late in adopting number portability and could choose therefore a real forward looking solution, implementing number portability both for VoIP and PSTN using Infrastructure ENUM. Especially in the US, but also in Europe, the hot issue of the year is IP Interconnect and number portability for VoIP.

No, they first implement number portability in the old-fashioned way first on the PSTN, and when they are finished, they eventually may look around what to do with VoIP. Ah, and not to forget: the security and privacy concerns have to be ironed out.

OTOH, it is nice to hear that the Carriers down under still have one or two engineers left in their company doing this.