Two experts in a new technology which maps telephone numbers to the Internet are scheduled to address an Australian workshop as the United States government throws its considerable weight behind moves for its implementation.

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) is scheduled to hold its workshop on the technology, known as ENUM on 4 March. The workshp will be addressed by experts Gary Richenaker from Telcorida Technologies in the US and Richard Stastny from OFEG, Austria, who are experts in trialling and implementing the telecommunications technology.

Advocates of ENUM argue it will allow people to use one identifier for many different purposes, including mobile phones, e-mail, instant messaging and faxes. ENUM is designed to accelerate the convergence of the telephone network and the Internet and is expected to offer a huge boost to online telephony services.

ENUM stands for e164 Number Mapping, where e164 is the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) code for the international telephone address number plan.

The ACA has released a second discussion paper incorporating public submissions received in response to an initial paper released in September last year.

"The comments we received covered a broad range of issues including who might best manage any database of users, and what privacy and security protection users should have," said ACA deputy chairman Dr Bob Horton. "We have now analysed the submissions, and issues for further consideration have been put together in a second paper which is now available".

Meanwhile, the US Commerce Department has strongly advocated the US participate in ENUM. "The United States should seize this opportunity and take steps to participate in e164.arpa, consistent with the highest standards of security, competition, and privacy," wrote Assistant Secretary Nancy Victory in the letter to the State Department. The domain that will be used with ENUM addresses ends with e164.arpa.

Victory said the United States should formally participate in the ENUM process and push for its implementation, consistent with a set of principles that include supporting competition, minimising regulation, promoting interoperability and preserving privacy. "Domestic implementation of ENUM must be done in a manner that maximises the privacy and security of user data entered in the ENUM DNS domain," Victory wrote. "For example, ENUM providers should develop systems to ensure the authentication and authorisation of users who enter and update their personal information."

When ENUM domains become active, users will be identified by their telephone number including the country code. What that means is a phone number such as +46-8-9761234 would be mapped to the 4.3.2.1.6.7.9.8.6.4.e164.arpa Internet address in a process that is expected to become automated and transparent to the user.

ENUM grew out of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Telephone Number Mapping working group, which drafted the RFC 2916 proposed standard in September 2000.

So far, 13 countries that are members of the International Telecommunication Union have signed on to the e164.arpa proposal and plan trials. The group is coordinating international efforts.

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