[enum-wg] ENUM: Some conclusions

Hi all,

As you know, I'm writing a thisis on ENUM adoption in Portugal. Most
of the conclusions can be extended worldwide, since the problems are a
bit the same everywhere.

I would like to get some answers/ideas from you about some of the
conclusions I'm getting at:

* lack of interest from operators (lots of things were writen already)
* no very good business model (it is sustainable, but won't get you rich)
* externality (the guy that receives the call has to pay for the
registration, the benifit goes to the caller)
* ... (many more were discribed on my presentation on RIPE-59)

A couple of new ones:

* the political mistake (user enum was designed to be delegate to each
country. Although that makes somes sense it rises a lot of problems.
If you realize that User ENUM is a service for User VoIP and that User
VoIP runs over User IP (common known as Internet), than you understand
that User ENUM should be managed somehow like User IP. I think that
User ENUM should had got, in the early days, a all new prefix that
should be delegated to the LIR's (just like the IP address space).
That would solve a lot of issues...) [if anyone has some kind of
documentation from the early days explaining why the country
delegation, I would very, very appreciate]

* lack of trust of the information on the tree (we all work on the
internet, most of it is "benign", but "cheat happens"! For most of us
this is bearable, and it's fine. But what about your grandma? What
from the operator point of view? What about the "universal telephone
service? I think that the concept of having information on the tree
that isn't (for sure) reliable is the main drawback for operators to
embrace user enum. The other issue is how do you charge a call... it
is alot more dificult than you may think. What if the user enum record
points to a international number using "tel:" prefix? what should the
operator do? An IVR advising the user about the call? make the call
and charge it quietly? What if it is a "value added number"? ...)


I'm thinking on writing the thesis in English, opposing to Portuguese.
What do you think? Will it worthwhile my extra effort? Do you think
this kind of information would be usefull to you?

Thanks for you time and Merry Christmas!

Rui Ribeiro
racribeiro at gmail.com