Who's in charge?
For the last several months, telephone and Net companies have been fighting over whether the Enum system should look more like the world of domain names or the government-regulated, tightly controlled system of telephone numbers. The issues largely revolve around who will get to run the big databases that store all the pointers to personal information associated with Enum telephone numbers.
Much of the debate has taken place in quiet meetings in Washington and Europe over the past few months, where the interests of companies and national governments are being weighed.
Major telephone companies such as AT&T and WorldCom have gotten involved, mostly seeking a system with a central place where information can be stored. Such a system would prevent a situation in which multiple companies compete for customers, resulting in the kind of confusion that followed the breakup of Ma Bell in the 1980s.
Even within the United States, it is unclear who has the authority to make final decisions. The State Department, the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission all are participating in the process, which has quickly become a political headache.
Several companies have already begun trials of the technology, in part as a way to show they can handle the business if it ever gets off the ground. NeuStar and VeriSign, each of which wants to run the central databases of any new system, have their own test projects.
VeriSign has gone one step further, offering a "complementary" version of the service that allows WebNum domain names such as "555-1212" that can be used on wireless phones to surf Web sites.
The company says it is trying to make surfing simpler on wireless phones, on which letters are difficult to type. At the same time, it is paving the way toward making itself known for handling telephone numbers.
Because of the politics surrounding the issue, even some longtime backers of Internet telephony are taking a wait-and-see approach to the technology's potential.
"I do believe there is a huge potential for Enum-enabled applications," Jeff Pulver, one of the early proponents of Internet telephony, wrote in an email interview. However, he added, "This is more dependent on the ability to execute on the vision than the vision itself."
Nevertheless, even the competing companies involved say the political hurdles are surmountable.
"The opportunity is that we accelerate convergence around the world," said Matthew Wald, NeuStar's vice president of IP services. "Convergence isn't a matter of if; it's a matter of when."
