25/03-04   -   Pressmeddelande

innovaphone takes on the role of pioneer for the development of IP-telephony solutions using ENUM

Convergence standard ENUM closes the gap between telephone networks and the internet innovaphone takes on the role of pioneer for the development of IP-telephony solutions using ENUM The IP specialist innovaphone has VoIP gateways which already support the new convergence protocol "Telephone number mapping" (ENUM).

This was the conclusion of a report "Field trial ENUM" made by the German Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Posts (RegTP) and the Central Registry for all domains under the Top Level Domain .de DeNIC. ENUM should enable the administration of internet domains and telephone numbers to be standardized. This allows for the bridging of a gap between the classical circuit-switched telephony and IP-telephony - speech transfer based on internet protocol (IP).

The foundations are thus laid for the fusion of telephony, fax and e-mail to a single, universal communication system (Unified Messaging). According to experts, the convergence standard ENUM could be the breakthrough to IP-telephony.

Telephone Number Mapping should ease the directory service across the board for tracing and addressing persons. The development of a communication directory for filing and maintaining all user contact information is planned. This will include telephone numbers for mobile and fixed-lines, fax numbers, IP-telephony addresses, voice mail systems, e-mail addresses and web pages.

The vision is for every user to have one single universal contact address, which allows him to be contacted anywhere in the world at anytime via office or private telephone, mobile phone, fax or e-mail. In addition the user is able to decide by which communication service he should be addressed at any particular time.

The system automatically chooses which terminal device is suitable for delivering the message. Eg. An incoming fax will be sent to a fax machine; dependent on user configuration a call can be forwarded to a fixed-line telephone, a mobile telephone or a voice box. Above all the new standard offers a better always-on service to the user.

Also IP telephony users have considerable advantages with the new convergence standard. It is currently the lack of interoperability of IP-based telephone systems and the applications available which often hinder company wide communication via IP-telephony. There are only few suppliers like innovaphone who uncompromisingly implement open standards.
Users who implement ENUM protocol are able to communicate with each other even outside of the company using IP-telephony, providing their solutions support the convergence standard. Isolated solutions, which are the norm of today for IP based telephony, would thus be a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, there are still regulatory questions which are blocking the progress of the ENUM-protocol. The reason for this lies in the merging of a 100 year old state built telephone network and the decentralised internet. The international telephone numbers of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) need to be linked to the Domain Name System (DNS) in order to build a central contact address.

Therefore ENUM projects were started in various countries. In Germany the "Feldversuch ENUM (field trial ENUM)" is being run by both The German Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Posts (RegTP) and the Central Registry for all domains under the Top Level Domain .de (DeNIC). The test was launched on June 1st 2003. The latest interim report states that until now only four products have successfully passed the ENUM practical test. One of these products is innovaphone´s Voice over IP gateways. The IP-telephony specialist based in Sindelfingen herewith again pioneers the implementation of convergence standards.

"We claim to react immediately to new standards and to develop products based on standards." informed Christoph Künkel, Director Product Management of innovaphone AG. "As with H.323, ENUM is about a convergence protocol which offers the possibility to controllably integrate various IP-telephony products from different suppliers. " continued Mr. Künkel. "This means isolated applications/solutions still being used today can be interconnected with the least possible effort."