Paris, 16 July 2001
Today the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (ART) make public the summary of responses of the public consultation on the ENUM project from 23 May to the 12 June of this year organized with the Secretary of State to Industry.
- Reminder of the objectives of the public consultation
ENUM is a protocol defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that allows the creation of Internet domain names based on phone numbers and their possible association with communications services (such as phone, mail, fax and unified messaging services). This is the first completely convergent project involving the world of Internet and telecommunications, combining aspects of numbering with aspects of Internet naming and addressing.
Implementation of systems based on ENUM imply numerous challenges that go beyond the French context. These mainly concern the control of numbering and naming resources linked to ENUM operations and the conditions of competition between the service providers based on this protocol.
This is why ART and the Secretary of State to Industry have launched a public consultation, whose objectives were to make the players aware and to gather their opinions on the project.
- The summary of contributions
13 contributions were received. They come from operators, manufacturers, service providers, research organizations, consulting firms and associations.
The following elements emerge from these contributions:
- It is essential to make management of ENUM domain names subordinate to management of numbering in order to keep the systems consistent and to ensure that services can be appropriated by a wide range of consumers.
- It is necessary to establish rules quickly to set the conditions for inserting and delegating ENUM domain names. These rules should take a position in the international agreement between ICANN and ITU, which appears to be the best guarantee of the necessary consistency between phone numbers and domain names.
- The uncertainty on the choice of a reference domain of ENUM names must not prevent the rapid definition of clear rules for management of the delegations, nor must they obscure debate on this matter, which is in reality, the primary challenge.
- There is a chance that only the ENUM database manager will be able to provide services that rely on the ENUM protocol.
This matter deserves a special scrutiny. This is why the Regulatory Authority and the Secretary of State to Industry following the public consultation conclusions, will deepen their thoughts, together with the players, in order to define the conditions ensuring competition between ENUM service providers.
Linked documents
Summary of the contributions 
, as well as some of the contributions of the economic players 