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

Hi Rui, hi all!

My apologies; I guess this discussion is indeed not what this list is 
made for, but I can't help answering, as you touch on a number of things 
which bother me as well for a long time.

First of all, I don't think ENUM is hard to deploy at all, it's hard to 
foster acceptance of it. I might oversimplify things, but IMO the 
problem with ENUM is:

* Benefit and effort are on two different ends. If *I* maintain an ENUM 
entry for my phone number which points so a SIP address, *you* can 
possibly call me cheaper. So I need to maintain my entry, you have the 
benefit. Only the small number of situations where I as the called party 
care about what the calling party has to pay for the call will just not 
make the case; especially as

* It is hard for the calling party to make an ENUM call. I can only 
speak from my perspective in Germany and a number of other countries, 
mostly in Europe. Like many people, I am making 95% of my phone calls 
from my mobile. As there is no single mobile operator in the world who 
does ENUM lookups on outgoing calls (AFAIK, correct me) my only chance 
would be two-stage dialling, i.e. call an access number, then call the 
number I want to talk to. This is a cumbersome process and few people I 
know would be willing to use it as their daily method of making phone 
calls. Especially as you cannot use the number stored in the mobile, but 
you have to punch it in again, etc. Also when I take a look at making 
calls from home, many people in Europe have VoIP enabled termination 
equipment these days; often in form of a so-called Fritz!Box (deployed 
by a lot of fixed line providers at least in Germany) and similar. But 
then again, the Fritz!Box does not support an ENUM lookup for outgoing 
calls and few other typically deployed VoIP terminals do.

Why is that?

I can only speculate, but IMO:

1. Because the providers who give customers the devices are not 
interested in their customers reaching IP targets free of charge; they 
will rather want to charge for the call. So they might execute some 
influence on the makers of those boxes not to put a simple checkmark "Do 
ENUM lookup on outbound calls" in there.

2. There is little pressure from consumers as ENUM is an entirely 
unknown concept outside VoIP wizards. Even lots of people who do know 
what VoIP is don't know or don't care about ENUM.


I have been thinking about that for a long time, and IMO there would be 
a very easy and effective solution to this problem:

Put up a regulation which makes an ENUM lookup on an outbound call 
mandatory for operators; both fixed line as well as mobile. Then of 
course the regulation should also include some proper rules about how to 
price calls to IP targets.

Maybe someone has a better idea ...

Regards,
Torsten


Rui Ribeiro schrieb:
> 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"?
> 
> Do users understand it and are willing to pay for it? Do companies
> understand it and are willing to pay for it? Do operators want to
> explain to their users what it is, while risking their benifits? Do
> constructers will make R&D on products that users don't understand? Is
> there a killer application other than VoIP for ENUM?
> 
> In other words: "does the business case mater for ENUM adoption?"
> 
> I'm aware that Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland and others have
> progressed to "final" deployment. I would like to exchange some mails
> with some of you about the financial aspect of the ENUM "technology".
> (fees, costs, ENUM registers per capita/phone number, service levels,
> ...)
> 
> Is ENUM a solution to gain money, or a solution to loose less money?
> 
> If it is to gain, who gains? Tier-1, Tier-2? (the user pays...)
> 
> If it is to loose less, who does? The operators, the users?
> 
> Many, many questions more... but only for you if you are interested.
> 
> Sorry about this "off-topic"/"non-technical" post, but didn't know
> where to go to ask this.
> 
> Thank you all,
> 
> Rui Ribeiro
> racribeiro at gmail.com