[enum-wg] .de regulator starts proceeding against voip providers using +49 numbers for voip

Carsten wrote:
>However, as I have learned in the meantime, Deutsche Telekom is offering
>a PSTN product called "T-Net vor Ort" (roughly: T-Net on-site) where a
>customer located in area A can get an area B number rerouted to his area
>A number - which appears to be pretty much what sipgate et al. are doing.

In Austria we have have this feature (although not very well
known to to customers - like many ISDN features) since more
then 20 years. It is simple: you get a number in an office without
an attached physical line and simply put a Call Forwarding Unconditional
(CFU) on it. Companies used this for routing local calls to their
call centers located somewhere else before 0800 was introduced,
so you see how old this feature is.
Note however: you CANNOT originate calls using this number
This will be important!

Nobody had any problem with this, but again: "Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi"

Back to the original dicussion: What are the problems with geographic
numbers for VoIP?

Since we have the same dicussion here in Austria too, some of
the arguments: pro and contra

But first some philosphical ideas about E.164 numbers:
- an E.164 number is primarily an address(name) for
a destination (end-point), in principle you do not need an
E.164 number to originate a call (but see below), in the
same way you do not need an address to post a letter.

- you need an address for posting a letter only to identify
youself and to provide a return address, same is valid for
phone calls.

-with originating phone calls you need an E.164 number
only to provide call back CLI, identification (MCI) and
geographic address for emergency calls (we will see later
that this is an important argument)

1) A geographic number is giving you the approx  location of the 
recipient
This may be interesting for calling Pizza services, but with call
forwardings and mobile phones this arguement does not hold.
Note: there is of course a difference between NA an EU. In
Europe most mobile numbers are different to geographic numbers,
in NA all mobile numbers are also geogrphic.

2) a geographic number gives others the possibility to call
you with local rates. This is BTW the major reason why
geographic numbers are popular for VoIP. On the other
hand, this reason will go away soon.

3) Popular cities may run out of numbers, requiring
numbering changes. Ok, this may be true in the NANP,
(but they seem to have no real problems there, not even
in Washington ;-)
but definitely not in the short term in Germany and Austria
with variable lenght numbering plans and a clever assignment
procedure and routing procedure (e.g. not giving away full 
numbering blocks to VoIP providers, but single numbers).
Also one may assume that fixed PSTN numbers are given
up for mobile numbers, so they may be ported to VoIP

4) Emergency services will get problems if called 
by these numbers.
This IMHO the real problem, but it needs to be solved in
a differnt way: providing location information for
VoIP calls in general. The simplest approach is to
use the same mechanism (partially implemented already,
partially planned) for mobile calls by providing actual
location information during the emergency call.

The proposed solution is as follows:
As long as emergency services have no access
to actual location databases and rely on static
information for geographic numbers, calls originating
with geographic numbers to emergency services
SHALL do this ONLY from the location provided
to the location database (e.g. phone book).

If a call is originated from a VoIP phone, this implies
the call is either originated from the given location
(in which case the geographic number may be used)
or if from somewhere else, a non-geographic number
must be used to indicate to the emergency service that
the address provided in the location database may be 
incorrect and the real location need to be found out
if necessary.

This implies that a non-geographic number range is
readily available for this use. It is also advisable that
calling this non-geographic number range from within
a country should be comparable with local call rates,
so the tariffing argument is not valid (this is also
feasible from a PSTN point of view, assuming that
calls to this number range is routed to local gateways
anyway)

Now this leaves three options for geographic numbers.
A) Strict: you need a fixed access in the geographic area
(e.g. a DSL or cable) to get a geographic number and
you may receive and originate calls only from this location.

B) Less strict: You need a fixed location in the geographic
area to get a geographic number, but you may receive calls
anywhere. You may originate calls using the geographic number
only from this location, if you are not at this location, you may either
not originate calls or use a different non-geographic number
Note: Since A can be converted with simple Call Forwarding 
immediately to B, A is useless.

C) Liberal: You may get a geographic number anywhere without
a having an access there to receive calls, but you are not allowed
to originate calls using this number. For originations you must use a
non-geographic number. This seems to be what the consumer
want.

Additional notes to consider:

The whole situation is completely out of control anyway and any
regulation on this issue will only hinder companies (especially
national ones) to pursue their business:

What is in principle the difference to the above cases on VoIP
if a have a PSTN line with a geographic number connected
to a SPA-3000 with an FXO port an now I make a call out
the PSTN in Vienna (especially to an emergency service) via t
he Internet (e.g. from Boston). No regulator can prevent this
an it has the same effect as above.

So the only argument that remains is number exhaust and this
argument is currently not existing. Just wait and see.

regards

Richard