Free universal VoIP numbers from enum2go.com

[voip247]

enum2go.com is offering free ENUM numbers in the 878-10 (International Personal Telecommunications) country code. The idea is that you map your 878-10 phone number to your SIP address. Then you just give out your 878-10 ENUM number as your phone number, and everyone can call you (including PSTN users). Unlike ordinary country-specific ENUM numbers, your 878-10 ENUM number does NOT match your PSTN phone number. This is a great advantage, because there's no point in paying for a DID just to get ENUM (especially when your PSTN number may change), and country-specific ENUM is getting bogged down in the politics around old telephone monopolies.

For example, +878107472000010 is the ENUM number for sip2go.com (enum2go partner web site) customer service. You can call in several ways:

1) A complete SIP address (878107472000010@sip2go.com) from a softphone like pulver.communicator

2) Just the ENUM number (878107472000010) from a SIP adapter that is registered on a VoIP provider that supports ENUM (e164.arpa) dialing. None of the big VoIP providers do this yet, but sipsnip.de does (and sipsnip.de also allows multiple registrations, which is very handy).

3) PSTN users can call 011-878107472000010 (very expensive so far and only possible from a few long distance companies) or call 011-43-780-7472000010 (works today?, costs the same as a call to Austria, which is 3.5 cents/minute from cheap phone cards like OneSuite.com)

However, enum2go apparently does not update e164.arpa or anything else when a new account is created. For example, after I created an account at enum2go.com, I entered the ENUM number in enum2go.com's "eNum lookup" tool, but it didn't show an entry. This does not seem to be a propagation delay because the results were the same a week later.

So enum2go.com seems like a tantalizingly good idea, but I haven't been able to get it working. Has anyone else been able to get it working?

Edit: I was able to get my enum2go 878-10 number working by emailing vincent.bergin@sentiro.com the destination SIP address that I want the 878 number to point to.

[BROKENLADDER]

enum2go apparently does not update e164.arpa or anything else when a new account is created. For example, after I created an account at enum2go.com, I entered the ENUM number in enum2go.com's "eNum lookup" tool, but it didn't show an entry. This does not seem to be a propagation delay because the results were the same a week later.

So enum2go.com seems like a tantalizingly good idea, but I haven't been able to get it working. Has anyone else been able to get it working?

Same thing here. As far as I can tell, it does nothing.

I signed up for an e164.org account, but their whole system is just weird. To get an ENUM number, they require you to verify a PSTN phone number, and then use that number as your ENUM number. This is utterly bizarre. I didn't have a PSTN number, so I just created a PSTN link to my SIP address through ipkall.com. So I have an ENUM number, but not through e164.arpa. I don't know what enum2go's problem is, but I emailed them several times and never heard back about this.

To be honest, ENUM is still a kind of hacked together "solution". The .tel TLD, being pushed by Pulver himself, seems to be a much better idea. A .tel number would be, for instance, 15551212, which would translate to 2.1.2.1.5.5.5.1.tel

However, this is still confusing to me. This makes it look like someone actually signs up for a .tel domain like 1.tel or 2.tel, and they then have the right to provision all of the rest, leaving only 10 people. This is just my thinking, being that it's inline with the way domains usually work. If I own google.com, then talk.google.com, or 1.2.5.2.5.google.com, is all mine, right?

These systems all seem really poorly designed from the beginning, probably because they're trying to allow companies to still force you to pay them something to be able to have a "phone number" even with the advent of ubiquitous SIP.

A more logical system would be something like a .tel domain, say .enm, where the domain name and "sub" domain name are all numeric, separated by a dot. So when you want to get an "ENUM" style entry, you just register with some provider, say 12345.enm, and pick a numeric user name, say 1984, and then your "number" is 1984.12345, and a dot is something that could easily be entered by having SIP firmware treat an asterisk like a dot or something along those lines. You could even just say that the right 6 digits represent the domain, so 33452487590 would be 33452@487590.enm, which could be used as a direct SIP server, or something like an enum store, whatever was a more logical system.

Does anyone feel my pain here? Why can't this just be logically and simply implemented? Oh wait..because big telcom companies and governments have their dirty mits in it.

[mitussis]

I suspect this is all jockeying before full deregulation of the phone number directory system (see http://enum.org/).

When this happens, a directory service would then point phone number lookups to any number of communication services of our choice. enum2go and e164.org org seem to provide these directory services (to allow you to point numbers to any sip service). But, only a few telcos link to those directory services (so most people can't find your number) so they are not very useful.

In the future we will (should) own our numbers just as we own our domain names. The link between a number and a network interface and bandwidth source then is completely arbitrary. Instead of paying for calls we will pay for bandwidth access and services (independently), just as we do for DNS registration, hosting, ISP, WLAN, mobile, etc.

Of course, the cellular network providers will fight this because they see what is happening to call revenue from people like us on the fixed networks. However, massive wifi rollouts, wimax, etc, and development of protocols to allow network switching mid call might hasten this.

[BROKENLADDER]

enum2go should be fine next week. I just got this email response from them:

Hi Clay

We are hoping to have a fix in place early next week. Sorry for the inconvenience.

regards


Vincent Bergin
Director
Sentiro

Tel: 0870 872 0750
International: +44 20 8607 8533
Fax: 0870 872 0751
International: +44 208 607 8531

Enum:+ 87810 747 2000002
Enum look up. www.enum2go.com

email: vincent.bergin@sentiro.com
www.sentiro.com

So with ENUM numbers, who will ultimately "pay" to register them? Do "providers" just buy a block of numbers from ICANN, e154.arpa, and then provision them as they see fit? This whole scenario is just weird. I want to support the standard that makes the most sense, so we don't end up an an SIP world where we use miles instead of kilometers, if you catch my drift.

[mberlant]

Pseudo Country Code +878 has been allocated by the ITU for the handling of ENUM services. Generally, the next 1, 2 or 3 digits behind 878 are the Country Code of the various countries and territories who have assigned Country Codes. The issuance of those numbers remain with the Administration of each Country Code owner.

Since no North American numbers begin with zero, +87810 has been allocated by the ITU for the issuance of non-geographic numbers. A service consortium, 87810.com, has been created to manage the issuance of Carrier Codes (like enum2go's 747, above) within +87810. These code blocks are available for no charge to qualified telecommunications organizations (like enum2go).

So, if you sign up for a number from enum2go you will get a number that looks like Vincent Bergin's, above. It will be yours to have and to hold for as long as enum2go remains in business and you pay them the fees they ask (which are currently zero).

[voip247]

Here's what I found about who delegated what E.164 numbers to who:

"The International Telecommunication Union delegated country code +87810 to VISIONng. VISIONng has assigned more than 2 million numbers since launching the +87810 trial... Telcordia Technologies and BearingPoint will operate and manage the +87810 numbering space (Tier 1 Services)."
-- http://87810.com

"+87810 is a numbering space based on the International UPT personal number service standardized by ITU-T (F.852, E.168, E.168.1) that offers global number portability. International UPT in addition enables access to telecommunication services while allowing personal mobility to the customer. On September 14, 2001 the International Telecommunication Union ("ITU") appointed VISIONng as the repository and administrator of the "878-10" Number Block for Universal Personal Telecommunication ("UPT") services. Based on this appointment VISIONng assigned on November 9, 2001 in full all rights, obligations and functions pertaining to the administration of the "878-10" Number Block solely and exclusively to its member company Telcordia using BearingPoint to operate the service for an indefinite period of time."
-- http://87810.com/about_us_about_visionng.htm

"Using a worldwide available numbering plan endorsed by the I.T.U. and delegated by RIPE... +878107472 becomes the first telephone number range providing worldwide portability for voice, email, SMS and web... ENUM is an enabler for convergence of the PSTN and the Internet. It solves the problems of portability and addresses the issue of global connectivity."
-- http://sentiro.com/news/news2.html

"As of early 2002, +878 10 range of numbers was assigned to VISIONng for use in an ENUM trial. See ENUM information in ITPCS for other references to ENUM development... In June 2004, a press release announced that Sentiro (Telesoft) was to deploy the first worldwide commercial ENUM service."
-- http://wtng.info/wtng-spe.html#UPT

AG Projects (https://secure.dns-hosting.info/quickRegister.phtml) will give you a free 878-10-2233 number, but they only let you point it to your own SIP address if you pay 30 euros/year (to see this, log in to your account there, then click 'Upgrade'). For the free service to do anything, you have to have set up your SIP adapter to register with sip.dns-hosting.info .


So, AFAIK, the chain of authority appears to be:
1) National governments probably have a treaty delegating country code assignments to ITU.
2) ITU delegated 878-10 to VISIONng
3) VISIONng delegated 878-10 to Telcordia (administered by BearingPoint)
5) Telcordia/BearingPoint delegated 878-10 to RIPE(??)
6) RIPE (or was it Telcordia/BearingPoint?) delegated 878-10-7472 to Sentiro
7) Sentiro is willing to delegate a number to you (for free for the first year, then for perhaps 20 euros/year).

I don't know if Sentiro's 878-10 numbers are portable or not, and whether you could lose your phone number if Sentiro went out of business. One clue might be whether any cellular customers have lost their phone number when the cell carrier went out of business.


http://internet2.edu/sip.edu apparently is promoting another possibility for a universal VoIP number-- your email address! Apparently the idea is that you could just buy an ordinary domain name from domains.yahoo.com or godaddy.com, then create a NAPTR DNS record (at granitecanyon.com?) that converts sip:yourname@yourdomain.com into sip:1747386xxxx@proxy01.sipphone.com or into sip:yourname.dyndns.org . For example, sip:mark@mit.edu and sip:6172531000@mit.edu (autoattendant) both ring and answer when pasted into pulver.communicator softphone. However, the only hardware adapter I know of that allows dialing by email address is Sipura, and they require pasting the address into the speed-dial config page first.

Another way of solving the interdomain callability problem is with a "personal SIP address book" web site. The idea is that there ought to be a web site where I could enter the SIP addresses of people I want to call, then "click to call". The web site would call me, then immediately call the person I want to call (giving a three-way call), then disconnect itself (in other words, call transfer). There could also be a Firefox extension that would add "SIP call" to the right-click context menu, just by requesting Firefox to display something like http://sipaddressbook.com/call?fr=us...1.sipphone.com

I agree with BROKENLADDER that the overall goal is just that VoIP users should be able to call each other for free over the Internet, rather than having to call each other through PSTN (and thereby have to pay for a lower-voice-quality call). I think all SIP companies would benefit from much faster growth if "all SIP users can call each other for free" were true.

[harry48]

Us Aussies are using a service called www.sipbroker.com to do something like you are talking about here. (i.e. sip to sip calls with different VSP's).

Regards,

[mberlant]

It looks like enum2go has no portability problems because it is set up as a relay service, just like IPKall. You sign up for an enum2go number and tell it what URI to point it to. If you change your VoIP service provider all you need do is provide the new URI and you are back in business.

If you are fortunate enough to have a 5-digit FWD number you already have a +878 number. It is +878-10-39311-xxxxx and it is already working.

[voip247]

harry48, I have tried sipBroker. It works right now, but it prevents incoming calls from ringing (unless you use an adapter capable of multiple SIP registrations, like the Sipura SPA-3000, and dedicate one of the registrations to sipBroker), and instead of fixing the fragmented SIP numbering space, it patches it by converting SIP proxy domain names into dialing prefixes (so the caller must still know which SIP proxy the callee is using). I found that I could do the same thing as sipBroker without losing incoming calls by using a long dial plan in my SPA-2100:
(<304:>[*x][*x].<:@sip2go.com>|
<216:>[*x][*x].<:@sip.like2fone.com>|
<393:>[*x][*x].<:@fwd.pulver.com>|
<747:>[*x][*x].<:@proxy01.sipphone.com>|
[*x][*x]x.)

A significant benefit sipBroker offers everyone is that it lists which SIP proxies are open to incoming SIP calls (that is, which SIP providers will accept SIP calls from outside their own networks) and which ones aren't:
http://sipbroker.com/sipbroker/actio...iderWhitePages (note that Vonage, Packet8, and the other closed SIP proxies are not listed)
**Internal Linking (Threads)
When sipBroker implements ENUM and a personal SIP address book with click-to-dial, it will be a lot more attractive.
**Internal Linking (Threads)
mberlant, FWD's ENUM is broken in several ways:

First, FWD's 878-10 numbers are in e164.org (unofficial ENUM root) but not e164.arpa (official ENUM root)
( http://nona.net/features/enum?e164=878103931110001 )
meaning that they are only dialable from SIP proxies that check e164.org, such as:
sip:878103931110001@sip.like2fone.com
(A few more are listed at
http://translate.google.com/translat...ki/SIP-Telefon
but they did not work when I tried them.)

In comparison, enum2go's 878-10 numbers are in e164.arpa
( http://nona.net/features/enum?e164=878107472000002 )
meaning that they are dialable from SIP proxies that check ENUM, such as:
sip:878107472000002@sipsnip.com
sip:878107472000002@sip2go.com
sip:878107472000002@sip2sip.info

Second, unlike enum2go, FWD and dns-hosting.info (free version) 878-10 numbers cannot be redirected to an outside SIP address. FWD does have a "Permanent Forwarding Number" feature ( http://account.freeworlddialup.com/i...?section_id=97 ), but that only works when the dialed number is the FWD number, not when the dialed number is the 878-10-39311 number.

Third, FWD's outgoing ENUM used to work by dialing a **164 prefix, but that hasn't worked in many months.

[BROKENLADDER]

Well, after much reading online and talking to some other users, I've found what seems to be a pretty good overall solution to good SIP functionality.

First of all, sipbroker.com recently opened up their server. This is good because it means you can use them as a directory, even without being registered with them. This is especially relevant, because they also recently began supporting ENUM lookup with e164.arpa, e164.org, enum.org, and enum.info (the latter is what sipphone.com uses to register all acounts--every sipphone/gizmo user has an ENUM number on it that is identical to his sipphone/gizmo "phone number").

So in my Sipura apapter's dial plan I have,

(*xx | <:+>[1-9]xxxxx.<:@sipbroker.com> | <0:1415>xxxxxxx | <0:>xxxxxxxxx. | ** | *0 | 411 | <911:14155538090>)


The *xx accepts things like *69

the next one turns any set of five or more numbers beginning with anything besides a zero into an ENUM lookup, by prepending it with + and tacking on @sipbroker.com to the end, since their server will look up entries to four major ENUM servers (even though there should just be one, right?)

The next one allows me to dial local San Francisco numbers easily with a zero followed by 7 digits.

The next one allows me to dial any arbitrary PSTN number by first dialing a zero.

The next couple just allow things like "what's my sipphone number (**)" and 411 info through sipphone.com.

The last entry dials the SFPD's emergency line if I dial 911, so I'm ahead of the curve on that voip/911 mandate.

But the great thing is that you can use sipbroker's ENUM lookup even without any dial plan mumbo jumbo. Using any provider that peers with sipbroker.com, including sipphone.com, you put your registrar server in the primary field in your device, and then in your "outbound proxy" option, you put in sipbroker.com

Say I'm using a Grandstream budgetone with sipphone.com. I just put in proxy01.sipphone.com as my registrar/proxy. Then on the line where it says "outbound proxy server" I type in sipbroker.com Now I can dial any ordinary number through sip phone. But if I start of dialing the 013 prefix (which sipbroker.com will soon switch with 011 I believe) the rest of the numbers will be treated like an ENUM number. And it really really works! Sorry..I'm trying to sound like an infomercial.

Sipphone.com and many others give you an ENUM number with e164.info, but for now you can use enum2go for an e164.arpa number, and by the time they start charging, there will probably be competitors. The nice thing is that some open organization is always able to become a sort of free "de facto standard" if it costs more than a trivial amount to maintain an e164.arpa number. Paying for someone to route callers to our current IP address is a bit silly.