At 06:09 a.m. 2/01/2009, Joe Abley wrote:
The problem space for businesses is surely identical to that of residences, if you consider the core functionality to be "signal a method to contact a particular person or role".
sip:noc(a)isc.org calls phones to ring on many peoples' desks; sip:jabley(a)isc.org just rings my phone. mailto:noc(a)isc.org sends mail in a way that those same people can see it; mailto:jabley(a)isc.org is for contacting just me. If we concede that we are not yet living in the future and hence need a "front desk number", no doubt we can think up a generic role for that, info(a)isc.org or somehting.
Perspectives which start from the basis of "how do I establish a voice connection to +1 519 670 9327" seem antiquated to me. Remove the baggage, and it's "how has Joe signalled that I should contact him?" The fact that we will no doubt need to maintain E.164 hooks into the system for the benefit of people who can't use any identifier other than a phone number does not mean that the directory service needs to revolve around arbitrary numeric strings.
Fair point Joe if you were starting with a clean sheet of paper. But we're not. Theres a largish installed base of legacy client devices that need to be accommodated. A while ago, when an IT Manager, part of my role was to look after a PABX and system of some 3k phones. The total call spent was then around $150k, of which 25% was fax (Internet was at the time about $30K and included CityNet). Now the rough rule is that 80% of calls were local. ie in Wellington. So an effective mechanism to remove the local calls would have been attractive to me. It was worth roughly $120k pa. Apply that to the top 50 businesses in WLG and theres a potential saving of $6M. This has a multiplier effect in the economy typically of 5:1, often as high as 7:1, but potentially the economic impact is $30M pa. So what I would be looking for is not a new total solution, but an add on that allows my existing gear to say "Fred has called this number,(name whatever), do I know where this is, or should I bomb off to the PSTN ?" It has to be REAL simple and easy and transparent to the end user. Anyone who has ever been involved in a PABX cut over or replacement and staff training, will explain that to many folks, even phone numbers and simple phone functionality is a challenge. (how many people stuff up call transfers in your office). And remember that there are folks with businesses that enjoy good profits off the current situation who might not particularly like VoIP peering. As a complete aside, Tony Randle and I often looked at how we could link PABXs using fiber E1 modems and DNSS. Sadly we both moved jobs and never got it done. CityLink did do a lot of dark fiber where there were E1 links for just this purpose (even for Telecom and Telstra), but it was generally internal to an organisation. There was no device that would have allowed organisations to join a mutual peering switch on a subscription basis. Well there was but it had big $ signs - well above the radar. VoIP has potentially changed this. Rich ps - I already have what I wanted. My VoIP provider gives free local calls. I registered for WLG and AKL and programmed my dial out codes as 4 and 9, and advertise local numbers in both cities.