Jon Udell uses my blog about the phone number trick at Google to talk about what happens when what used to be public but obscure becomes public and easily accessible.

He also mentions the IETF ENUM initiative “which seeks a mapping between telephone numbers and the DNS.” The official IETF white paper on usage scenarios of this mapping says:

In a pure IP environment, ENUM will allow end users to be identified by a commonly used name (i.e., their telephone number) for a variety of applications. … [E]nd users can change IP service providers without having to change their destination identification. For example, an end user can change their underlying e-mail address from [email protected] to [email protected] but, with ENUM set up to handle e-mail … still be reached by having ENUM-enabled mail clients send mail addressed to their ôtelephone numberö (e.g., mailto:+1-973-236-6787).

For voice services, ENUM will allow the easy end user identification described above as well as interworking between terminals [phones] on the PSTN and on the IP-based network. It may also allow for the implementation of more advanced services, such as find-me. For voice communication starting on an IP-based network, ENUM can be used on each call to determine the preferred type of destination based on the priority of the network termination available. For voice communication starting on the PSTN, ENUM is more likely to be used where at least one of the destinations of the call exists on an IP-based network.

I don’t know enough to have an opinion. If you do, lemme know.

Categories: Uncategorized dw