NEW DELHI: Net to phone? Yawn. Wake up and hear the sound of phone-to-Net telephony. The technology enabling telephones to call PCs – and just the other way round – is falling into place rapidly. So, crucially, are the policies that will allow the tech to deliver.

Indeed, today’s vast gap between the public switched telephone network, aka PSTN – which runs your everyday conventional telephone - and the Internet is disappearing faster than you can say: “One world, one number”. And an Internet Telephone Numbering System is close to being created.

This past weekend, the International Telecom Union (ITU), the governing body that approves all new telecom standards and protocols being developed worldwide, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Engineering Task Force approved interim procedures for project ENUM, as it has been nicknamed.

What is ENUM?

Put simply, it’s a system that will enable you to have just one phone number, irrespective of whether you use a conventional phone or your PC as your phone.

Developed in close cooperation with the IETF (an international community of network designers, operators and vendors), ENUM is the protocol that the ITU has been working on for the past three years. An ITU panel named Study Group 2 has worked out the principles and procedures for administering ENUM, which have now been given green light.

ENUM will provide seamless access across the spectrum of communication devices, no matter of which the kind of network - circuit-switched, as in the case of phones lines, or packet-switched, as in the case of the Net – powering it. How? It will use the Domain Name System (DNS) – the system that provides the com after the dot – to have a single phone number for you.

Let’s say, for instance, that your phone number – with the international dialling code thrown in – is 91-80-5529426. ENUM will allow your computer phone to have the same number. Your caller will still dial 91-80-5529426, and ENUM will translate it into 6.2.4.9.2.2.5.0.8.1.9.E164.TLD.

That’s your phone number backwards, wuth the domain E164.TLD tacked on: an Internet domain – like .com or .org – created specifically for phone-to-Net telephony. The E164 – yet to be formally approved, of course - stands for the ITU’s recommendation of E.164, which defines the international public telecommunications numbering plan.

Crucially, callers will need to only enter the phone numbers. ENUM will detect whether you’re using a traditional phone or an Internet phone, and receive your call. The reversing of digits and conversion into the DNS will be performed by back-end software.

WHAT WILL ENUM ACHIEVE?

The lack of an interoperable standard to turn a telephone number into an IP address – the numbers by which a computer is identified when it is connected to the Net - has been a major factor limiting the deployment of Voice on IP services. If desktop computers can be assigned telephone numbers as well as names, this system can enable common telephone handsets to place voice or video calls to such computers using IP networks.

This is a significant step towards integrating Internet-based services with the global telephone network. The agreement between ITU and IAB will now allow trials to take place.

Indeed, ENUM holds out the promise of a single point of contact for all communication devices. It should be possible to use a single number to access several services, through multiple devices, such as phone, fax, e-mail, pager, mobile telephones, Websites or any other services available through an internet addressing scheme.

In the long term, it could enable many more services. Calling an ENUM-enabled telephone number from a third generation wireless multimedia phone could, for instance, allow access to a mobile web service, thus avoiding entering Internet-type addresses on numeric keypads.

Another possible application of ENUM is the support of dynamic routing of certain types of calls, say those from friends or a buddy, list to a higher priority device such as a mobile or a pager. The potential of ENUM is driven by the integration of different addressing systems used in the PSTN and Internet worlds.

HOW SOON WILL THIS HAPPEN?

The initial ITU-IAB approval is a significant but small step. ENUM has already been in the works for about three years. With this development, countries wanting to implement trial ENUM systems can start working towards it. But the cost could be a deterrent.

In addition to giving rise to several regulatory issues under different regimes, it might call for sizeable investment by networks both at the hardware and software levels.

Implementation by networks and countries would be voluntary, and they might want to be guided by their own cost-benefit analysis rather than be lured by a fantastic offering. There is also a question mark over whether networks would like to lose control over numbers.

According to ITU, rapid progress at the international level is necessary to create a stable environment in which investment can be made in the worldwide deployment of ENUM.

As per the ITU’s procedures, ENUM principles will now undergo a traditional approval process (TAP) in November 2002. TAP is the formal approval process applicable to recommendations having policy or regulatory implications.

Under this procedure, a consultation of the member states takes place to determine whether a study group is assigned the authority to give the draft recommendation final approval at its next meeting. If approved by the ITU member countries, the ENUM text will become effective for implementation.

But with both technology and consumers demanding a confluence of all forms of telephony, it’s really a question of when – and not if – ENUM comes to a PC near you.