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U.S. Endorses ENUM
esarjeant writes "It looks like the the U.S. has endorsed ENUM (also known as E.164.arpa). This means you get a single number for phone and Internet, look for demos at Spring VON (San Jose, April 1-3) and VISIONng will be engaging in US trials. Essentially this means you get a new TLD of e164.arpa with your phone number in front of it." The addresses look pretty long and unwieldy, but supposedly consumer devices will make it easier to use.
about and not your social security number?
I love the quote: "
U.S. should endorse the effort but work to ensure that users' privacy and security will be protected and innovation and competition would be encouraged."
patriot II?
Could they be talking about Microsoft when they mention
innovation? After all everyone knows Microsoft is very
good at legal innovations.
hey moderator.. help me understand how its off topic? Havent heard of cell phone users getting spammed? Now we can have a spam autodialer/ portscanner for all the phones and inet connections. How does this make my life any better? Is it that complex to remember a phone number and an internet username? This IMHO has *nothing* to do wiht making things better for the consumer and everything to do with business selling direct to you. " The Department of Commerce said it will support an electronic-numbering system, known as ENUM, which would allow consumers to specify a single identifier for their telephone numbers, e-mail and Instant Messaging (news - web sites) addresses, fax numbers, and mobile phone numbers. In a letter to the State Department, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Nancy Victory said the U.S. should endorse the effort but work to ensure that users' privacy and security will be protected and innovation and competition would be encouraged. "
Y'know, this isn't going to be as bad as you think it is.
Sure, it's been argued that this means anyone can find out your phone number from your IP, your IP from your phone number or something similar, and telemarket the living daylights out of you. Not true. Unsolicited telemarketing spam, as you've no doubt been reading on Slashdot, is likely to soon become illegal in all states and most of Europe - at least, that's what I see happening. The closer the internet comes to the phone system, the more quickly we'll see spam being made equally illegal.
As well as encouraging people and corporations to get the broadband into peoples' homes - and I see just about every home "having the internet" within the decade - this system could provide a way of linking a physical location or house number with an internet address, making it easier for legitimate marketers to get along with consumers. I'm already seeing banner ad servers that see from my hostname the I'm in the UK and serve me advertising for UK ISPs - expanding on this concept, we might some day find all banner ads like Slashdot's - serving us only advertising that interests us (Megatokyo shirts, web servers, ThinkGeek) and less online casinos, spyware and fake Windows dialog boxes!
If you think about it, if someone is trying to get a hold of you why should they have to try several distinct numbers and addresses? Doesn't it make sense to have just one, and information gets routed to the appropriate interface (phone, e-mail, IM, etc.)?
Besides, there will probably be some directory assistance to find people. Even people who are not listed can give you their number once and your equipment will remember it based on the short identifier you give it.
The Future (tm) will be "Call John" "E-mail John" "Im John" Not "Phone 4.3.2.1.5.5.5.2.0.2.1.e164.arpa"
Come on, what could be easier that instead of dialing, typing or whatever, you just tell your device who you want to contact.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Seriously folks, the phone is the simplest computer interface in the world, don't ruin it.
Too late. Have you seen some of the wireless phones these days? Just like every other consumer electronic device, phones are getting close to being unuseable without the user's guide. Each cell phone I've gotten over the last 6 years I like less than the one before. I can't wait until this absurd marketing-executive-spawned nonsense of phones that take pictures and phones that do text messaging through the numeric pad and other stupid gimmicks dies a well-deserved death. I want a phone to call people! I don't need companies Microsoft-ing cell phones so that they do a bunch of unrelated useless tasks and do nothing well. I don't need to friggin' surf the Internet on an 80x120 pixel screen!
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I'm the biggest gadget freak I know, but these new phones just look stupid to me.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There are many states that have clear restrictions and laws regarding e-mail spam, but this is never tracked down or dealt with. Specifics like no forged headers, no using anonymous remailers, and so on. But it's tough to track down, and spammers are very crafty, and thus little gets done - at all. Connecting the two (phone, internet) will only worsen the problem. Perhaps, senators would be more interested in legislation and enforcement if they have a 9 year old daughter being offered penis enlargement during dinner-time.
Me: Hello?
Someone: Hi, is this 2..2.0.6.7.4.9.5.1.4.1.e.164.arpa ?
Me: Yes.
Someone: Did you get my e-mail?
Me: Who is this?
Someone: Do you want to improve your sex life by having a penis enlargement.
Me: I'm sorry , but I already have a large penis.Goodbye.
*click*
ring..ring..
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Of course there is enough bandwidth. It isn't like the current telephone network system has insuffient bandwidth to cover all the voice calls we currently make.
Don't forget that all voice calls are transmitted over the phone networks on 64K virtual circuts.
Voice over IP, as long as we can keep the IP networks sufficently responsive (a big if), should work fine since telephone companies would be forced to redirect their current voice bandwidth into IP bandwidth.
Spammers will be able to compile email lists from the telephone directory, promting everyone to go ex-directory, and rendering the phone book obsolete
A symbiosis will be encouraged between email spam and phone spam
Telephone numbers will be available all over the internet, even if they are ex-directory
Changing your phone/fax number will require changing your email address, and vice versa
Moving to a different region will require a change of email address, thus rendering an obvious advantage of email irrelevant
Of course there are advantages as well, but I'm feeling cynical today. Is it just me, or does this plan seem a little naive? A bit like ten years ago, when the internet was going to solve all the problems of the world overnight, and make everyone suddenly nicer.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
I would love to see what their plan is for supporting members of the US Armed Forces and Foreign Service and US expats overseas. We get a number like this while in the US and then we are stationed outside the US. What happens then?
I am still waiting for about 50% of online merchants to figure out the APO/FPO system and how to mail me products. I would rather the Dept. of Commerce fix that problem first before they help telemarketers spam me no matter where on the globe I am.
And what about costs of the calls/transmissions? If I am in Southwest Asia and someone in the US calls my ENUM, who gets tagged for the long distance bill?
Bureaucracy loves company.
The text messaging on some phones is quite easy to use, and frequently costs less money then a short call...and is a lot less intrusave to recieve (and sometimes make). So for me, text messaging via the keypad is a win.
I can't say I've really found web browsing on a phone all that useful. Except once. I had taken a walk in a show storm and managed to get lost on twisty little roads. Mapquest even on the tiny phone was quite useful. A GPS might have been better, but I didn't have one. That was 3 years ago or so, I havn't had great use for a web browser in my phone since.
I don't think this new addressing scheme will have anything to do with how we use cell phones though, just how we use computers to talk to cell phones...
Plus, isn't this just Carl Malamute's tpc.int all over again? Same thing, revers the digit order, put dots between them...
I wont use it, thank you. My phone number is unlisted. I take pains to protect that and I use a relatively anonymous email address that cannot easily be tied to me in the real world.
I will not go for having my phone number pasted all over the net, part of every newsgroup posting, email-based opinion expression, etc. My phone number, address, etc, are not for wide open, general consumption.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
"The Phone Company"
For those who don't know (and are too lazy to check here, this is a free service that maps fax numbers to email addresses, so, if you know a fax number, you can send a properly mime-formatted fax (or plain text, it works), to them via a .tpc.int email address: it gets routed to a local internet to fax gateway (presumably a local call away from the destination fax machine), and thence to the desired destination.
Being free, coverage is not perfect, of course, and there are limits to how much each gateway will accept (per origin, hour, day, week, etc.) but the system works surprisingly well!
Yes, fax machines are not phones, but the concept obviously extends there.
You could've hired me.
Ok, so it sounds convenient right? People will be able to find you regardless of the mode of communication, right?
Right. BUT here are the problems.
1) Now the Government can also find me.
2) I'm pretty sure someone will use this to track you/your communications
3) Sometimes I want someone to have my email address but not my phone number, or vice versa, etc.
4) I don't like the idea of being labeled with a number.
I'm sure you call all add others. For me, those concerns weigh heavier than any conveniences.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
As any educated slashdot reader knows, the instant (and I literaly mean 1 second later) that ENUM becomes operational there will be millions of spam messages targeted to those poor souls.
So, I recommend lawmakers first create a global "do not contact me" list where anyone can go in and declare their ENUM "spam-less".
Of course, this will NOT stop spammers from moving their operations to other countries were such laws do not apply and then send you spam anyways.
In other words, I think the ENUM idea is a great idea, but one which spam will very likely kill. Just imagine, once a single spammer gets a hold of my "universal address" there is NO WAY I will be able to stop such spam. Today at least I can get a different email address and get done with it, but once you have your ENUM tied to your home address, personal website, home phone, fax, work phone, cell phone, beeper, etc, changing emails/numbers/addresses all of a sudden becomes VERY hard. As a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised if the spam community is actually lobbying to get ENUM approved.
Note that I *wish* I was wrong (and if I'm proven wrong you can trust me that I'll be the first one to be happy about it), but my take on this is that something like ENUM will only work effectively in the long future when all countries agree on a worldwide do-no-call list with legal penalties regardless of in which country you are.
Note that when you look up a US local phone number, it has only one destination (subject to local number portability) However, with US toll-free numbers (i.e. 800, 888, 877, 866, 855), the destination location is dependent on the time of day, the calling party id, and the relative amount of traffic sent to one location versus another. A toll-free number can have a separate destination for a given calling party 10-digit US phone number, area code or other criteria so that a call you place and one I place may end up on different carriers and different parts of the country. Also, a toll free number often absolutely prohibit connections altogether from some portions of the US (or Canada etc). Routing these calls properly is not simple.
For reasons such as this, I think we can expect a lot of hands out looking for money for putting small records in databases (registration) and for looking such up. Look at the business models of the heavy sponsors of ENUM.