ENUM trial goes ahead

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) has chosen Melbourne-based company AusRegistry International Pty Ltd to run the first Australian trial of ENUM.

The ACA signed a contract today with AusRegistry to provide and operate a registry service for the trial, which will involve providing links to data indicating the communications preferences for consumers who have registered their phone numbers.

ACA Acting Chairman Allan Horsley said the trial was expected to commence in early June.

ENUM makes Internet-based communications services accessible using only a single telephone number. Using ENUM, phone numbers are converted to Internet addresses, allowing end users to link one or more communications services to their telephone number and providing a single point of contact for services such as Voice over IP (VoIP), email, presence and instant messaging.

ENUM is especially suited to VoIP applications and has the potential to assist in providing high-quality, end-to-end VoIP calls between different networks carried entirely over the Internet.

"The Australian trial is expected to run for a minimum of a year," Mr Horsley said. "It will be open to anybody interested in testing applications or services with ENUM.

"Several trials of ENUM have already been begun in Europe and Asia and a full commercial ENUM service was launched in Austria in late 2004."

Mr Horsley said that because ENUM provided a bridge between traditional phone networks and the Internet, the ACA expected communications providers, businesses and consumers would find it made an expanded range of communications solutions available.

"ENUM also enables phone numbers to be converted to addresses that can be used by any Internet-based communications services," Mr Horsley added. "As a result, some providers of VoIP services have been experimenting with ENUM for interconnecting VoIP calls between different networks.

"The advantages of this new solution are significant because it allows callers to contact people via Internet-based services while continuing to use familiar phone numbers."

AusRegistry International is a wholly owned subsidiary of AusRegistry, the current registry operator and wholesale provider for all commercial.au domain names including .com.au and .net.au and the non-commercial domain names .gov.au and .edu.au. During the trial, AusRegistry will be required to maintain a stable platform for other trial participants to develop and test new applications and services using ENUM.

For more information on the ENUM trial, visit the trial website at www.enum.com.au

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