[enum-wg] ENUM Adoption - Does a business case matter?

Hi Otmar!

First of all: Thanks for some new aspects your brought to the
discussion. I didn't know that ZapMail thing before.

I think the VoIP as a product versus VoIP as a service thing pretty much
hits it. Just I have to heavily disagree with what Clay Shirky wrote.

VoIP as a product (buy a device, connect, talk to people) has never ever
worked. Not all all. Any this might be the problem after all.

If I could buy a VoIP appliance in the next electronics store which
would allow me to start talking to other people who bought an appliance
which uses the same protocol and if this appliance would be cheap and
required no but a trivial configuration, that would be it. For sure.

But reality is that the VoIP operators behave exactly like any
traditional telco. VoIP as a service. You have to subscribe (ok, the
subscription fee might be 0,00), there is a tariff plan, calls are only
free on the same network or on a small number of interconnected networks.

What I always wondered is why people do accept that.

Would you accept an ISP which delivers email only to accounts on it's
own and on selected partner networks and who will print and snail mail
or fax if the mail leaves their own network. This is excactly what
happens if I am with VoIP operator A and I make a call to VoIP operator
B. Unless two two have a peering agreement by chance, the call will go
VoIP -> PSTN Gateway -> PSTN Gateway -> VoIP. How stupid is that?

Now the question to me is: What the hell do I need a VoIP operator for?

I can make a device listen for incoming calls on an IP address on a
given port. If we take IPv6, I can have a fixed IP address which will
even be entirely independent of my ISP and it will even be mobile. So I
could just print my IPv6 address on my business card and possibly
announce one or two alternative protocols under which I will accept
calls on that address. No operator needed.

If I want to call someone, I can make my device open a socket to the
other party's IP address and there we go. This would be VoIP as a
product. So what's holding us back from just doing that?

This will not solve the ENUM adoption problem, but looking at IPv6 based
end-to-end telephony, ENUM looks to me like a solution in search of a
problem.

In case it would happen that ... say as many people as are using Skype
today ... would use standard protocol IPv6 based voice over Internet I
am sure this would make the telco's move about how to make that cloud
reachable from their networks. And there ENUM would be back in the game,
mapping a phone number to a protocol:IPv6address record.

Remains one yet unsolved problem:

Many people use mobile phones today. Where do I get a IPv6 address over
a GSM network? On the network level: I could use any other data over 3G
/ 3.5G flatrate (available in Germany starting at 14,95 / month with no
contractual obligations), just most GSM operators *tolerate* VoIP at
most while reserving the right to cut it off at any time. And of course,
one would need a handset which would be capable.

In that case, Android might be a solution.

Remains the problem that the latency of 3G networks isn't all that VoIP
friendly. Not that it doesn't work at all, but it remains a 2nd best option.

I have to come back to my call for the regulator: Why are fixed line
operators required to open their last mile up to competitors while GSM
operators aren't?

Regards,
Torsten


Otmar Lendl schrieb:
> Rui Ribeiro wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I'm new to the list, so this will be my first post... I'm making a
>> master thesis on ENUM and its adoption (or non adoption). My
>> background is 100% technical, so I'm "a believer" that ENUM is like a
>> swiss knife to handle all kind of addressing problems between E-164
>> numbering and the new Internet URI based services. It can solve many
>> other problems and can, even, be the base/enabler to new services.
>>
>> But I wonder if this is the pragmatic view that we should have about
>> new things.
>>
>> What if ENUM is getting "hard" to deploy because it can't provide a
>> business model to its "stake holders"?
> 
> This is indeed the problem.
> 
> I'm a techie myself, but I've learned the hard way that technological
> superiority is pretty much useless by itself. Unless the business
> incentives and the marketing align, you will not get your superior idea
> adopted by the marketplace (or even standardized).
> 
> Actually, your subject should be "ENUM Adoption - Does anything except the
>  business case matter at all?".
> 
> So, what chains shackled user-ENUM to its current subsistence?
> 
> Some comments:
> 
> * User ENUM is a technology for voice as a product, and not voice as
>   a service.  See http://www.shirky.com/writings/zapmail.html
> 
> * See also the idea behind http://www.phonegnome.com/
>   More below.
> 
> * SIP is a mess. Basic calling is bad enough, given the troubles
>   with NATs, Firewalls and other middleboxes, but interoperability
>   for more advanced phone features is terrible.
> 
>   If you link average PBXs, Asterisk installations, ... you will get
>   spurious errors. Sudden one-way audio. Dropped calls on handovers, ...
> 
> * Price erosion. The current prices for regular telephony are so low
>   that working around the telcos doesn't make as much sense as it used to.
> 
> * Call pricing these days is by far dominated by termination fees, not
>   geography and distance.
> 
>   So: optimizing the route will give you minimal benefits compared to
>   bypassing the toll-gate at the entrance of the terminating operator.
> 
> * There is NO incentive for a carrier to accept anonymous SIP calls from
>   the Internet. Quite to the contrary. Termination fees are a significant
>   part of their revenue (not in all countries!). Less hassle with DoS, Spit
>   and legal issues.
> 
>   Opening up SIP ingress point robs carriers their "termination monopoly"
>   with regards to their own customers. Bad idea for them.
> 
> * There is little incentive for a carrier to do ENUM resolution on outbound
>   calls. Why? All the ENUM marketing says, "make free calls using ENUM",
>   thus the customer won't accept fees on such calls.
> 
>   Bottom line for the carrier:
> 	* no enum: charge wholesale price + x %, no technical challenges
> 	* enum: charge nothing. Happy debugging SIP with whatever software
> 		the other side has mis-configured.
> 
>   All he gets from outbound ENUM is a marketing boost.
> 
> * What might actually work is when PBX vendors get together and add
>   ENUM to their boxes and certify that the interconnection between these
>   boxes actually _works_.
> 
>   That's a bit like the phonegnome mentioned above.
> 
>   This doesn't quite work with plain user ENUM though, as there is
>   no mechanism there to signal that you only want to talk to certified
>   ENUM-aware PBXs.
> 
>   I've written up some ideas on how you could enhance ENUM / SIP to do
>   that, see http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lendl-speermint-federations-03
>   (+referenced docs).
> 
> * There certainly will be uses for ENUM in the carrier space, though
>   from what I see I doubt that they will manage to build the single
>   I-ENUM tree necessary to drive the global, optimal, multi-hop
>   VoIP routing we actually need.
> 
>   If you want to read up on what b0rkeness the IETF is currently
>   hatching, have a look at http://tools.ietf.org/wg/drinks/
> 
>   (Lest that I'm accused of not offering alternative ideas, see
>   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lendl-speermint-background-02 )
> 
> /ol