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Re: DUNDi

Alex Bligh wrote:

I don't actually think the ITU (w.r.t. e.164 numbering) is necessarily
the pointy horned creature with forked tail that some people portray
it as, but suggesting e.164 (with competitive / alternate root etc.)
is going to break the tie to e.164 / ITU numbering is daft. We already
have that - just don't use ENUM.

My reasoning for enum is quite simple, in the next 5 to 10 years (at least) people will want to stick with what's familiar, after all 100 years of "phone numbers" is going to be a difficult mind set for some to deal with if it suddenly changed tomorrow. While most phones might be in fact VoIP devices in the next 5 to 10 years, how many incumbent monopoly telcos are likely to let them be addressable by anything but existing numbering plans? Whether we like it or not numbers are he to stay for quite some time. If you want a good example of mind set, most people here where possible get their PABXs to sound like the normal phone network because they can't deal with it sounding like something completely different.

I think if anything mobile phones and "smart" cordless phones might be the first to shift once they include a SIP component and you don't have to deal with entering email like addresses in all the time, for the most part entering an email like address into a phone for a one off basis will be highly inefficient unless you have a better lookup system to link people to phones, at this stage the simplest solution is still numbers as it saves you from requiring a PDA to make phone calls with. People like smallish phones, only geeks and people wanting to save on expensive phone calls want 101 key computers to make quick phone calls with, so getting better interfaces will be highly important to breaking the mind shift.

Finally people will be mightily ticked off in future if geographically representing numbers is no more, others and myself have had numerous calls at 3am coming in via fat finger dialing/wrong numbers, if the cost is reduced and there is no easy way to distinguish where a person in relation to their time zone then this trend will only increase. Another similar example in Australia is the fact that mobile phone numbers aren't geographical based, this of course let the telcos charge crap loads for calls but that's another matter, but people often call wrong numbers and get someone on the opposite side of the country without realising it. For another kicker, the main telco used to charge by distance.

I'm not advocating the ITU or any other telcos, but the fact is numbers are a good way of co-existing with almost every other phone on the planet at this point in time, rather then trying to make existing infrastructure fit in with geek idealism. However DNS makes a good, scalable flat file database, it is already implemented in a lot of devices/software and it just plain works.

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Best regards,
 Duane

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