Austria reinforces its position as worldwide leader in ENUM

Press release dated 27 April 2006

Infrastructure ENUM now possible

"Due to the supplementary agreement concluded by enum.at and RTR on April 18, 2006, communications service providers in Austria can now use infrastructure ENUM commercially," announced Georg Serentschy, Managing Director of RTR's Telecommunications Division, after the conclusion of the agreement. "ENUM supports the mapping of telephone numbers to addresses (domain names) which can be used on the Internet, thus it can be seen as a bridge between conventional telephone networks and the Internet," comments Serentschy on how the technology works.

Infrastructure ENUM (electronic number mapping) now also enables communications service operators to enter the numbers of their subscribers in a separate subdomain and to store operator-relevant data there (e.g., for routing or call charging). Up to now, it has been up to the end-consumer to decide whether (and which) data should be entered in ENUM. "In infrastructure ENUM, on the other hand, the operators have control over ENUM entries as well as its benefits," explains Robert Schischka, Managing Director of enum.at; "As a result, we assume that this will substantially increase interest among operators in handling ENUM entries and thus also push demand for this technology."

"Although willingness to use ENUM is apparently higher among operators in the Internet field than among conventional telephony providers, the significance of (infrastructure) ENUM could increase again with the switch to next-generation networks using the Internet Protocol," Serentschy adds. "This is another milestone in making Austria an attractive ICT location," he concludes.

Austria in first place worldwide in ENUM

In the spirit of Austria's leading role in ENUM worldwide, ENUM pioneers Michael Haberler (Chairman of the Board, Internet Foundation Austria) and Robert Schischka (Managing Director of enum.at) invited representatives of registries throughout the world to Vienna for a two-day ENUM event in early April 2006. The objective of this expert event was to exchange know-how and experience, and to offer a "fitness program" for newcomers to ENUM operations - with first-hand tips and practical experience reports after 1½ years of real operation. The event was the subject of lively interest, with 30 representatives attending from countries such as Finland, Belgium, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania, and even four participants from Thailand.

Just recently, Austria's ENUM pioneers were able to prove their competence in ENUM and enjoyed great success: After an international invitation to tender, the Irish Commission for Communications Regulation decided that the Irish-Austrian consortium "IENUM" should set up and operate the ENUM registry in Ireland. The consortium comprises the Irish domain registry IEDR (for the ".ie" domain) and the Internet Foundation Austria (IPA).

Commercial ENUM operation in Austria since December 2004

Already in August 2004, enum.at and RTR concluded an agreement on the operation of Austria's central ENUM infrastructure for the Austrian ENUM domain 3.4.e164.arpa, thus initiating the commercial use of ENUM in Austria. Since December 2004, end-users have been able to register geographical and mobile telephone numbers with ENUM registrars in the ranges (0)5 (private networks), (0)720 and (0)800; telephone numbers in the (0)780 range, where each number used must be assigned an ENUM domain, have also been delegated since May 2005.

Both the original agreement and the supplementary agreement for infrastructure ENUM can be found here.

enum.at is a wholly owned subsidiary of the non-profit Internet Foundation Austria (IPA) and therefore affiliated with nic.at, which is responsible for the registration and administration of all .at domains.

Additional information can be found at enum.at.