ENUM Protocol in Australia?

Master Kai writes "Looks like Australia's thinking about implementing ENUM, an internet protocol that will convert a simple phone number into a URI. The benefits are obvious, use one number to contact you on any communications medium. Your website, fixed phone, fax, mobile (cell) and email address. But at what cost to our privacy? I know that personally I prefer to give out my email address, because I can change it at the click of a button. And what about spam? Not only would spamers have your email address, but your contact numbers too. Eeeep! Anyway. It looks good nonetheless. Check out the news article , and for the Australian Communications Authority Discussion Paper. "

Comments

why not a number?

[keithmoore]

actually, numbers are great. they are terse, they work on any keyboard in the world (including telephone keyboards), and they are language-independent. and when you think about it, phone numbers really aren't much less mnemonic than the local-part of a typical big-ISP email address.
of course, nobody's suggesting that we use numbers instead of email addresses or URLs, but addresses that consist of nothing but digits are in fact quite useful.

and anyway, enum is only half of the picture - there's also a proposal for mapping URLs to other information from the rescap working group. The basic idea is that an identifier should not be inherently tied to one single kind of resource - given either a phone number or a URL (and the latter includes email addresses), you should be able to find out additional information about that resource if the owner of that number/URL wants to provide it. phone number to web page? easy.
email address to phone number? sure, if I want to provide it. or maybe you have my voice # and want to send me email. again, no problem.