COMPETITION AND PRIVACY ISSUES PART OF DEBATE ON ENUM

ENUM has become increasingly important because of push for adoption of Voice over IP (VoIP), Gartner Dataquest analyst David Fraley said. In July technology analysis, “ENUM -- What Is It, and Why Should I Care About It?” Fraley said one problem VoIP must overcome was addressing: “If VoIP is to gain widespread usage, soft switches [which translate an ITU E.164 phone number to an IP endpoint] must work together. A key global issue is addressing, and the only recognized Internet solution is ENUM.” ENUM has capability of linking many services -- among them fax, voice mail and instant messaging -- to single phone number, he said.

ENUM relies on current international public telephony numbering practices as set out in ITU’s Recommendation E.164. Under E.164, public phone numbers are delegated on country- by-country basis, with entity in each country that’s responsible for administering system. In U.S., that entity is NeuStar, which issues blocks of numbers, creates area-code splits, and performs other services that allow telephone system to function. (NeuStar also is registry for new top- level domain [TLD] .biz, and for U.S. country-code TLD, .us.) IETF RFC 2916 envisions having E.164 dialing plans resolve in DNS via Internet infrastructure top-level domain .arpa, so that telephone numbers become associated with URLs.

Forum has 5 task groups working on various aspects of ENUM implementation. In Jan. 4 Internet Draft document on “Overview of the ENUM Forum” co-authored by Richenaker, they are: (1) Architecture & Infrastructure. (2) Provisioning. (3) Security & Privacy. (4) Applications. (5) Interoperability. At its meeting next week, he said, groups will try for agreement on technological requirements for running ENUM in U.S. Once those criteria have been approved, Richenaker told us, there will be Request for Proposals (RFP) issued, perhaps in spring, for administration of U.S. ENUM system. Similar exercises are under way in several European countries that have their own ENUM forums, he said.

Development of ENUM has raised several issues, those involved in process say. Perhaps most controversial is question of where phone numbers should “live” in DNS. There now is consensus -- but not total agreement -- on concept of single, public “golden tree” (e164.arpa) from which all ENUM queries would be launched (concept is akin to domain-name registry that runs particular TLD). NeuStar, Telcordia, WorldCom and others back that position, representatives said.

However, VeriSign disagrees. Internet giant agrees with U.S. govt. that ENUM should be deployed with administrative and technical neutrality that fosters competition, Internet Strategy Vp Anthony Rutkowski said. Not only should there not be simply one domain for ENUM, he said, but other protocols and platforms should be considered. VeriSign hosts Netnumbers.com, which is part of ENUM Alliance, consisting of companies implementing private versions of ENUM that don’t run on “official” ENUM TLD e164.arpa.

Problem with such private systems, however, is that many people think it won’t be technically feasible for them to interconnect to public ENUM system, said Peter Guggina, WorldCom dir.-technical standards management. Moreover, he asked, why should company such as WorldCom join ENUM Alliance when it could create its own private network and then jump to public system when it emerged?

U.S. Tier I database operators will be named by federal govt., Fraley said in his Gartner analysis. As of last July, Netnumber, NeuStar and joint venture of VeriSign and Telcordia were considered competitors for slot, Fraley wrote. But no one knows yet which govt. agency will be responsible for deciding how many Tier I operators to have or who they will be. Nor is anyone sure who would be responsible for issuing whatever RFP comes out of ENUM Forum meetings. There are 3 options, said Telcordia’s Richenaker: (1) Some govt. agency such as FCC or NTIA or Dept. of State, which works with ITU. (2) Industry limited liability corporation (LLC). (3) Combination. WorldCom favors LLC, Guggina said, because that’s framework used for RFP for Local Number Portability administrator.

Consumer privacy is another key concern, several commenters said. As Internet users acquire more identifiers for each new technology -- instant messaging, e-mail, online games and so on -- questions arise about who can get access to those identifiers and how they're used in conjunction with one another, Rutkowski said. ENUM purports to deal with that “huge emerging marketplace,” he said, but consumers have said they don’t want to be identified by telephone number, not only because of privacy concerns but because number would be assigned randomly by some company.

But privacy concerns can be mitigated by blocking database operator’s WHOIS function, Guggina said. ENUM Forum has proposed that -- unlike domain-name WHOIS databases -- there be strict registration procedures and no access to ENUM WHOIS databases, with strong prohibitions against selling information to 3rd parties. Personal data that show up in domain-name databases won’t appear on ENUM, he said. Privacy is issue, Richenaker said. However, he said, people’s phone numbers already are in many different directories and ENUM is opt-in system, giving consumers choice of what information goes into database.

Concept of ENUM standing alone may have come and gone already, Rutkowski said, but 2 more interesting trends are emerging: (1) Changes in convergent signaling environment, as telecom networks merge with IP networks, are making available Signaling System-7 (SS-7) capabilities on Internet for IP telephony and new services such as porting of instant messages to cell phones. (2) Presence Availability Management activity -- what Rutkowski called “ultimate mother lode” -- is allowing people to have “multiple personas” for wide array of Internet-based services. VeriSign sees ENUM as service that points phone number to IP telephony end instrument and that’s bundled with those other services, he said. Others may view ENUM as something that’s closer to FCC-regulated telephone industry. At this point, he said, ENUM is “a political policy football.”