I am posting this from the SIA Lounge waiting to fly to San Diego for IETF #60. The main purpose there is to organize a “Carrier ENUM” mini-BoF with Richard Stastny on Wed afternoon. Carrier ENUM aka known as Infrastructure ENUM or Operator ENUM is a new way we notice carriers and operators starting to use ENUM to do “number resolutions” within their network or between carriers. It is quite different from what we envision how ENUM would be used in the first place (ie, individuals coming along and register their phone numbers) and many people expressed doubts whether ENUM could satisfy the requirements in the first place. It is going to be an exciting discussion.

Incidently, there is an interesting article at Telepocalypse regarding pay-and-keep settlement among US carriers in 4 years time. Such model is already been used in SMS but it could be pretty disruptive if carriers adopts it. Considering the operation cost to do minute-charging is more expensive then the settlement itself (due to falling prices in voice-calls), it does makes a lot of sense. More importantly, this will bring about a change in the business landscape in the voice market, one which could potentially bring more competitions to the market since carriers are not longer dictated by the most powerful incumbent termination charges.

It is also an inevitable development for the telecom market to transit from a 200B industry to 20B. Painful but neccessary.

ps: See my previous entry on how voice-termination are been done today.