[enum-wg] repost: Proposal for non-geographic ENUM E.164 UPTS for the general public

hi!

>>>> [currently large regional blocks are reallocated by voip gateway 
>>>> providers to voip-users. so a voip-user from e.g. dresden can have a 
>>>> number from e.g. duesseldorf, hamburg, berlin, munich - or all of 
>>>> them.]
>>>
>>> [of some major concern to the regulator]
>>
>> yes - actually (except for some endusers that consider it fun to have 
>> numbers from different cities) i know of nobody who is really happy 
>> with this solution,
> 
> you just have found the first person then. :-) My crowd back in Berlin 
> happily rings me up with my Berlin VoIP number whereever I am.
> 
>> [...] it's hardly optimal to dial +4932.... or any other cc-number to 
>> reach a user who is currently in helsinki and might be in hongkong 
>> tomorrow...
> 
> I guess, for Germans callers it would :-) - in particular if any +4932 
> call from the PSTN is deemed to be local and dumped onto the Internet ASAP.
> 
> And if I am able to get a grip on other CCs with similar ranges and 
> rules, I am able to satisfy the needs of my counterparts there, too.

well ok, that's the enduser-you ;)
of course i'm using this too, as it's an easy way to save money. but i 
don't regard this as a reasonable (long-term) solution, and i strongly 
doubt that this practice is helpful for a reasonable development and 
smooth convergence... and probably this will be prohibited over here 
(more or less) soon, i guess this will happen in the moment +4932 
becomes 'available'.
btw: the enduser-you is probably less happy having to call a +1* 
voip-number from pstn from germany or having to call a +4932* 
voip-number from india compared to calling a +878* voip-number... :) 
telcos again might probably often be more happy with the first solution...

maybe we could also set up some kind of demoscopic tool on the 
wg-webpage, to find out e.g. what percentage of the enum-wg resp. 
interested community thinks it's best or ok to stick with the cc-numbers 
for voip, and if so whether the regional numbers are regarded ok or only 
the non-regional national numbers (where available) should be used for voip?

>> as an international prefix could be seen as a public resource that has 
>> to be available in a non-discriminating way, i beleive personal 
>> numbers assigned to the endusers are again the most straightforward 
>> solution.
> 
> 
> Indeed, you are right - at the end of the day, what I outlined above 
> might be only a mid-term solution. Then again, you also want to be 
> reachable from the PSTN - and as Richard Stastny said, deploying a new 
> CC in the global PSTN seems to be really a drag...

to illustrate better what i tried to explain before (i.e. the situation 
is different from a 'real' cc-prefix):
imagine a telco with a PSTN network. as soon as this telco has an ip 
gateway (as i said before, this is already very common at least over 
here), the telco can route this prefix to that gateway, there an enum 
lookup is done and the call is connected. at the same time the telco is 
able but in no way forced to offer gateway services for calls from ip to 
pstn to voip-providers or voip-users.
even if the telco doesn't have an own ip gateway, buying such a service 
from a different telco would be another simple option.
offering connectivity to voip-numbers would be an interesting point when 
it comes to competition between telcos. i beleive there's a strong 
incentive for telcos to set up an ip gateway as soon as such a prefix is 
available.
technically i know for example for our primary telco that it were easily 
possible to set up +878* routing for their PSTN network today. and no 
coordination with other telcos would be necessary, no dependencies.

>> hm, right, 100% ack.
>> but maybe that's just my bad explanation in the proposal, the idea was 
>> to allocate blocks to providers to keep administrative work at the rir 
>> level low, while every single number stays portable by using the 
>> hierarchical means provided by whois: if a single number out of the 
>> provider-allocated block is ported, the maintainer is changed to the 
>> new provider as well as the enum-delegation (see collection of 'most 
>> specific' nameserver info in the proposal).
>> this way every number would stay portable.
> 
> 
> So who then would be in charge of the database of ported numbers: the 
> RIR? Many DBs, one maintained by each ITSP that got the block allocated 
> originally?

no, the idea is to use the whois-db. with allocated blocks these blocks 
would be distributed over the different RIRs' whois-dbs. porting a 
number would mean a change of the whois-db entry (by the current admin 
i.e. holder of the maintainer-object of the respective number), 
replacing the maintainer-object and delegation data of that entry.

with assignments of single numbers without prior allocation, this is 
different, either some reasonable way of distributing these single 
assignments over the RIRs' whois-dbs must be found or a single whois-db 
had to be used. this also might affect the mechanism to generate 
delegations.

only the whois-db(s) would be necessary to hold the authoritative data 
regarding number assignments.

>>> [ensure portability/assigning a number directly to the user]
>>
>>
>> from my view this would be the most charming solution - but creating a 
>> lot of work on the rir level is not an option, and currently i don't 
>> know of a practical solution to that... hmm...
> 
> 
> On the "handling the workload" issue it might be helpful to get an 
> opinion from an/the RIR[s] itself/themselves, I guess.

sure, that's also mentioned in the proposal. i guess you know who could 
be the right person with insight and ideas for procedures at the RIRs, 
or at least at RIPE? :)

>> right... hmm... maybe without allocation of blocks to providers, but 
>> allocation of a 'number of (not specific phone-)numbers' could work. 
>> actually that would already be a kind of AW-solution. hm. sounds 
>> realistic to me, while work at the rir-level were still rather low.
> 
> 
> I am afarid I lost you here - what do you mean with a 'number of (not 
> specific phone-)numbers'? Even the comparision with an AW didn't help...

i mean an amount of numbers. say, a provider has the possibility to 
enter 1000 numbers (no matter which ones) before an application for the 
next e.g. 1000 numbers is necessary.
i.e. still keeping an 'AW' approach while not allocating specific blocks.

kind regards,

	Chris Heinze