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

Hi Mark!

> They can charge their clients for the normal rate,

But then the whole point of VoIP termination is gone.

Ok, it would be possible to charge them less. For example, Afghanistan
(yes, some people call there) is still a comparatively expensive country
for termination; 30 EUR-Cent / minute on average. I could come up with
some other examples.

If Skype would decide to charge only the < 2 EUR-Cent per Minute they
would charge for calls for example to the German fixed network in case
the call goes to an ENUM target, that might be a fair compromise, as I
think their effort is comparable. For a termination in VoIP it means th
operator needs to forward the traffic to the next Internet Exchange.

The same would be true when it comes to traditional telco's. I said this
before. I they charged a call to an ENUM target at the same rate as a
call to a national landline or to a network internal target, I think
that would be as fair as acceptable.

> A weak point for ENUM is that you need an ENUM domain per number and
> these are not really used and at the moment to expensive compared to
> the savings.

Expensive?

I never paid a single cent for any ENUM domain. Not in Germans, not in
Bulgaria. I haven't used ENUM in other places of the world.

Regards,
Torsten


Stream Service schrieb:
> Hello Torsten,
> 
> It is cheap for Skype / other operators to use ENUM, where possible, for
> outgoing calls. They can charge their clients for the normal rate, but save
> a few cents (on long calls). We are currently looking into ENUM and are
> planning to start using ENUM (starting with outgoing calls and incoming will
> follow soon if everything goes as planned).
> 
> If for example a big telco starts using ENUM for landlines it would be great
> start.
> 
> A weak point for ENUM is that you need an ENUM domain per number and these
> are not really used and at the moment to expensive compared to the savings.
> 
> With kind regards,
> 
> Mark Scholten
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: enum-wg-admin at ripe.net [mailto:enum-wg-admin at ripe.net] On Behalf Of
> Torsten Schlabach
> Sent: maandag 29 juni 2009 18:13
> To: Rui Ribeiro
> Cc: enum-wg at ripe.net
> Subject: Re: [enum-wg] ENUM Adoption - Does a business case matter?
> 
> Hi Rui!
> 
>> I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of
>> ENUM.
> 
> Yes, and IMO it's the only flavor for which the public cares. I couldn't
> care less if my Telco operator is using SS7, an internal ENUM tree or a
> flat text file to lookup the target of my call as long as I have no
> influence over it.
> 
>> User ENUM will pushes governments,
>> regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm.
> 
> Yes, but how?
> 
> One possibly extremely successful method would be to convince Skype that
> they do ENUM lookups on their SkypeOut service and deliver the call via
> IP (and free of extra charge, of course) if there is a valid IP target
> returned or to offer a way to terminate skype: URLs as a means of
> SkypeIn. Both would boost ENUM! The only problem: SkypeIn and SkypeOut
> as they are are sources of revenue for Skype.
> 
> As a smaller scale alternative ... (just coming to mind):
> 
> Few people know that default SIP clients such as Ekiga (formerly
> GnomeMeeting) can make calls to ENUM enabled phone numbers without
> having to use a gateway at all. Maybe this needs a bit more promotion.
> Any volunteers to start a Phonebuntu distro? (I am serious, guys!)
> 
>> The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree
> 
> I think they are doing that a lot, unfortunately. ;-)
> 
> No, sorry, but I think here you don't say what you mean. I guess you
> meant to say:
> 
> The second will be to "force" operators to *query* the ENUM tree
> 
> I agree with you that - as much as I hate saying this - it will have to
> be the regulator who needs to so something about this. Unless someone
> could come up with a different compensation for the network operators
> for the lost revenue of IP termination. And network operators in that
> case are not just the good old PSTN / GSM telcos but 95% of all VoIP
> network operators, both open standards based and proprietary (think Skype).
> 
> If you need any links in / information about German telco regulation,
> feel free to ask me.
> 
> Regards,
> Torsten
> 
> Rui Ribeiro schrieb:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> 2009/6/24 Carsten Schiefner <enumvoipsip.cs at schiefner.de>:
>>> Richard Shockey wrote:
>>>> Remember there are two form of ENUM .. the 'classic ENUM" of RFC 3761
> and
>>>> e164.arpa and the carrier ENUM which are private instantiations of enum
>>>> trees using the technology of 3761. Carrier ENUM which is essentially a
>>>> replacement for SS7 and Global Title Translation is doing just fine and
>>>> deploying rapidly for applications like MMS/SMS routing etc in carrier
>>>> networks.
>>> IMHO this just cannot be stressed too much. Actually, Rui's whole set of
>>> questions needs to be separately applied to both flavours; e.g. "Do users
>>> understand it and are willing to pay for it? Do companies understand it
> and
>>> are willing to pay for it?" wrt. Infra ENUM puts operators up as users
>>> and/or companies.
>> (companies <> operators) (companies = ENUM user companies)
>>
>> I know that there is infra-structure ENUM. My work will be on user
>> ENUM though. The infrastructure ENUM is here to stay, it is being used
>> on several countryies, companies and operators to route calls outside
>> the SS7 system. These are private ENUM trees, in fact, there isn't an
>> infrastructure worldwide/universal ENUM for operators. This may
>> happen, but I believe that there is no drive to it on the "old" PSTN
>> networks. On IMS, ENUM is part of the ecosystem. I wonder if there is
>> the "vision" to integrate the several ENUM trees.
>>
>> I will be focused on user ENUM. For me this is the "hard" part of
>> ENUM. And if it is so hard, is it worth it? For me it is... the
>> Internet is user driven, ENUM may provide this shift of paradigm on
>> the Voice (and other) services. User ENUM will pushes governments,
>> regulators, operators and companies to the new paradigm. I think that
>> detach the e164 number from the PSTN Voice service is the first step.
>> The second will be to "force" operators to question the ENUM tree and
>> to terminate the call through their own gateways to the Internet, if
>> ENUM returns a valid address.
>>
>> After that, the door is open. Once users get numbers detached from the
>> Voice Service, new services will be available, for sure. Users are
>> very innovative, and new users/usages will submerge. VoIP bases
>> services will be the frist (marketing, IVR, podcasts, ...), but others
>> will follow. Will it be cool to have a number to access your website,
>> I don't know... but why not.
>>
>>> A first idea of an answer might be heavily related to the interconnection
>>> and termination regime in a certain country as well as the (non-)
> existence
>>> of number portability - and how this is technically done.
>> What are the termination regimes available world wide?
>>
>> Found some:
>> - bill and keep (US)
>> - cost based (access) (?)
>> - calling party pays (Europe)
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you all,
>>
>> Rui Ribeiro
>> racribeiro at gmail.com
>