UK VoIP users to get better connected

alf

Data & Voice Networking News

12 March 2009
UK VoIP users to get better connected

By Maxwell Cooter, Techworld

VoIP is about to get more attractive for UK businesses as a new registry service is set to go live. The UK ENUM registry will mean that businesses' VoIP information will be in the public domain meaning that better use could be made of lower-cost calls.

The registry, run by UK registration agency Nominet will allow users of different VoIP systems, be they proprietary like Skype or standards-based SIP devices to talk with each other, provided that they both had an existing phone number.

Nominet won out on a tender held in 2007, run by UK Enum Consortium, to run the registry. Phil Kingsland, Nominet's director of communications said that the process would work in a similar to that of the domain names; Nominet would be Tier 1 registrar while other registrars would hold the registrations for businesses. He stressed that although the underlying technology was the same for Internet domain registrations, the two databases would be held separately with no current plans to merge. He said that there were currently three registrars in the UK but expected that to grow.

In addition, Nominet would have authority for the validation agencies, the organisations that would monitor registry applications to ensure that the people applying had the authority to apply and actually owned the number in question. Kingsland said that this was to avoid some of the disputes that bedevilled the Internet in the early years.


In addition to the cost savings of using VoIP, business users will be able offer additional features such as 'follow me' allowing callers to use a single number to call someone who is not in a fixed place throughout a day - and without paying the cost of a mobile call. Kingsland said that for the first time, VoIP users would not have to belong to the same network.
The core technology of ENUM works by translating a phone number into a domain name. This allows users to continue to use existing phone number formats , while allowing the device to route the call using a DNS lookup. Kingsland said that the ‘work' would be done by the VoIP system so that a caller looking for a particular business would be diverted over the VoIP number if that business had a registration. "The caller would have to do nothing, the VoIP software will do the searching in the same way that a conventional exchange will find the number."

Kingsland said as the system had only just gone live it was too early to talk about the size of the registry but he envisaged steady progress rather than rapid take-up.

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Can someone break this down in layman's terms for me? Thanks a lot.

redux

alf wrote: »

Can someone break this down in layman's terms for me? Thanks a lot.

Broken down in stages, at the speed I can go:

Two people using the same VoIP provider can call each other for free

Some VoIP providers have peering agreements which give free calls between their customers on different networks. Sometimes they'd call a SIP address, sometimes the phone number

A mechanism which identifies whether a subscriber number is connected to a VoIP service is ENUM. The number will get translated to the subscriber's SIP address by a look-up process akin to a domain name server translating from a website name to its IP address.

This article is on about Nominet getting a contract to run the ENUM records. And apparently they're going to have records for the details of commercial companies' VoIP

This might mean that large companies can call each other for free.

It might even mean their customers with VoIP accounts can call them for free, subject to the right peering agreements.

But does it actually mean that? Errrrm, I'd have to read it 3 times and then think about it a bit.


n.b. - but in the next few years, phone exchanges will be converted to being based on IP protocols anyway - and this does not mean free phone calls

bunking_off

Well done Redux, that's a good explanation.

Of course the problem with ENUM is the chicken & egg situation that if no-one's querying it, there's no point in putting your number in. If no-one's put their number in, there's no point in querying it. And so the circle continues...

(If you want the semi-techie explanation, ENUM is a way of putting numbers into DNS. To convert a telephone number such as (01234)567890 into something suitable for DNS, it's put into international form 441234567890, reversed, dots added and the agreed top level domain added giving 0.9.8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1.4.4.e164.arpa. That can then be used as query to DNS - much as forums.moneysavingexpert.com is - to deliver a record which provides the SIP address to send the call to. Having that SIP address, and having a relationship with the owner of the address to send calls to it, are two completely different things though...)