Subject: [NEXTEL-1] U.S. backs merging Net, phone numbers

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 04:01:14 -0500

U.S. backs merging Net, phone numbers

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer,
CNET News.com
February 13, 2003

WASHINGTON

The Bush administration is lending its support to an international
proposal to map telephone numbers to Internet addresses.
In a recent internal letter, the Commerce Department recommended
that the United States participate in an emerging electronic
numbering system, known as ENUM, that will allow people to use one
identifier for many different purposes, including mobile phones,
e-mail, instant messaging and faxes. ENUM is designed to
accelerate the convergence of the telephone network and the
Internet and is expected to offer a huge boost to online telephony
services.

"The United States should seize this opportunity and take steps to
participate in e164.arpa, consistent with the highest standards of
security, competition, and privacy," wrote Assistant Secretary
Nancy Victory in the letter to the State Department. The domain
that will be used with ENUM addresses ends with e164.arpa.

Victory said the United States should formally participate in the
ENUM process and push for its implementation, consistent with a
set of principles that include supporting competition, minimizing
regulation, promoting interoperability and preserving privacy.
"Domestic implementation of ENUM must be done in a manner that
maximizes the privacy and security of user data entered in the
ENUM DNS domain," Victory wrote. "For example, ENUM providers
should develop systems to ensure the authentication and
authorization of users who enter and update their personal
information."

When ENUM domains become active, users will be identified by their
telephone number including the country code. What that means is a
phone number such as +46-8-9761234 would be mapped to the
4.3.2.1.6.7.9.8.6.4.e164.arpa Internet address in a process that
is expected to become automated and transparent to the user.

ENUM grew out of the Internet Engineering Task Force's
(http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/enum-charter.html)
Telephone Number Mapping working group, which drafted the RFC 2916
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2916.txt proposed standard in
September 2000.

So far, 13 countries that are members of the International
Telecommunication Union (http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/enum/)    have
signed on to the e164.arpa proposal and plan trials. The group is
coordinating international efforts.

http://news.com.com/2100-1033-984591.html?tag=fd_top

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