[enum-wg] market potential/future for public ENUM

Well said Jim .. and the competitive aspect of the data is potentially the most frightening to a telco. It could be mined to determine which consumers switched carriers. It would be unbelievably effective in testing marketing campaigns which is why administrator of the US LNP databases is specifically prohibited from sharing the data with anyone other than the regulator.

Now as a side bar ..there is this little dispute in the US about ATT buying T-Mobile and in the only known instance of disclosure the US Justice department requested from the FCC and received the LNP data. Presumably to mine it in its anti-trust evaluation of the merger.  

-----Original Message-----
From: enum-wg-admin at ripe.net [mailto:enum-wg-admin at ripe.net] On Behalf Of Jim Reid
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 3:46 PM
To: Ričardas Pocius
Cc: enum-wg at ripe.net
Subject: Re: [enum-wg] market potential/future for public ENUM

On 2 Jun 2011, at 14:15, Ričardas Pocius wrote:

> I do not understand people writing LNP/MNP data should no be in public
> zones; there is no private data there, just technical information how
> (where) to route calls properly.

Many telcos consider that sort of information to be not just private,  
but highly sensitive. For instance it discloses info about the ingress  
and egress points to/from their networks: where their SBCs and SS7  
switches are located, network topology, etc. The industry obviously  
needs to know this stuff. It's debatable whether it should be known to  
the general public.

A public NP database brings other concerns too. It opens up a new  
vector for slamming. It would publish info about which numbers are  
active and/or ported in a number block. If I was running a telco, I'd  
not be too keen on making that sort of information available to my  
competitors. It would also be too easy for telemarketers to mine that  
public database and harvest all the unlisted phone numbers.