Subject: RE: [Enum] Does User ENUM provide end user value as it stands?

From: "Lupton, Ronan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:56:02 +0100

Lee,

This adoption and business modelling issue is something that most of the
national and group ENUM 'think tanks' are toiling with on the User ENUM side
of things. 

Standards in general in my view, provide the lowest common (value)
denominator on which creative and innovative services can be based.

Rhetorical question: What competitive differential is derived from an open
standard? Short term super normal profit perhaps.

You have referred to Skype in your last two mails. One thing that Skype has
done successfully is provided a 'shrink wrapped' interface on proprietary
code to access consumers. Consumers drive demand, that we know to be a fact,
which you have correctly identified.

If some innovative person or company could 'shrink wrap' ENUM or more
relevantly NAPTRs and the .e164.arpa Tld and numbering/domain functionality
in a similar fashion I contend that ENUM will 'just work'.

There has been a push to have national administrations and regulatory adopt
and trial ENUM CC.e164.arpa ranges.

I replied directly to you on the anti-competitive comments re: ENUM as I
don't really believe that your proposition holds too much truth. However I
of course respect your opinion and thank you for providing food for thought
on what has become a quiet ietf distro.

ENUM has in my opinion some great User and Carrier uses in it's current
state, portability being one of them and of course multiple address grooming
for users.

There are a few factors which negative migration en masse to ENUM, SIP
services, Skype, Google voice etc. these are bottle necks in the supply
chain for access services. In many territories the provision of robust
access services is derisory, this is clearly a problem for innovators and
policy makers.

So in summary treat as lowest common (value) denominator, focus on NAPTR as
the glue that binds the services and move on.

Ronan Lupton

Member of the 353 ENUM Policy Advisory Board

**The views expressed in this message are the view of the author and do not
represent any policy or company position**

-----Original Message-----
From: Lee Dryburgh [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 12 September 2006 08:12
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Enum] Does User ENUM provide end user value as it stands?

Hi Folks.

I've been struggling for much of this year to find a digital identity, which
would service the real-time applications I have in mind, and is likely to be
deployed. Lately my attention has been on ENUM as a candidate.

I'm concerned that User ENUM will not see widespread adoption because AFAIS
ENUM as it stands holds very questionable value for the end user. Which
demographic of people do we see buying ENUM numbers and why? I strongly
suspect that the market has changed since ENUM was devised - primarily the
rise of Skype and others (including PSTN call in functionality) and the
shine coming off SIP.

I see huge potential value in E.164 (as a namespace/identity), particularly
when stored in DNS. But what I do not see, is what User ENUM has to offer
today that would generate adoption. In short, where is the value for the end
subscriber?

I appreciate the feedback from the ENUM community some weeks back on whether
ENUM was anti-competitive and hope to receive feedback on this topic as well
(end user value/adoption).

Many Regards

Lee

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