SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France -- US demonstrations planned at Spring VON in San Jose (April 1-3). VISIONng (http://www.visionng.org) announced today that a US trial of ENUM, an Internet Standard which uses the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) to reconcile telephone numbers, will be deployed for use with the Global Country Code "87810." ENUM is a standard that can also be used for resolving requests to one universal phone number. Telephone numbers are based on ITU's E.164 country codes and therefore are considered national resources. National Regulatory Authorities must designate ENUM Tier 1 registries for their national phone numbers. ENUM is a IETF standard and this service will use the ITU/IETF agreed upon e164.arpa root as specified in RFC2916. The "87810" country code is administered as specified by ITU SG2. Essentially, ENUM allows phone numbers to be looked up the same way the web finds a domain name. Telesoft and pulver.com have announced their intention to offer ENUM capabilities to their users, expanding services beyond traditional service providers. Vincent Bergin Director of Telesoft, a service provider based in the UK stated that Telesoft will offer "87810" services to their International customers. "At Telesoft we see the opportunity to offer customers new telephony services regardless of their existing telecom provider or country boundaries. This will enable enterprises and their customers to benefit from a cost effective and unified global service. "In Austria we have conducted national and international trials in the last year", said Richard Stastny Chair of the Austrian ENUM trial platform (http://enum.nic.at), and we have seen the benefits of a universal telephone number with Telekom Austria as ENUM Registrar'. Under this scenario the "87810" ENUM entry is used for directing the call to the proper medium. Faxes, e-mail, Instant Messaging, and all forms of telecommunication can be managed by this single powerful tool. An affiliated company to pulver.com's Free World Dial-up service will become an ENUM registrar enabling Free World Dialup (FWD) participants to maintain an ENUM entry that will enable a universal service. The use of the "87810" can also be used for vanity numbers, particularly for people who want to associate their Voice over IP (VoIP) gateways at home to their existing United States "1+" phone numbers. The test plan calls for pulver.com's Free World Dialup community to be the first one offered this experimental service in the US. "FWD is an open invitation to anyone with broadband Internet access to experience the great quality available today worldwide using broadband Internet Telephony", said Jeff Pulver, recognized Guru of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Industry. "By allowing FWD participants to take an "87810" country code assignment we are making a statement that the PSTN and the Internet are global assets. The backbone of the Internet has made it possible for me to communicate with people just about anywhere in the world, and people should be able to reach me regardless of my physical geographic location. On the Internet with Free World Dialup, you can call a person, not a location. Other broadband service providers enable subscribers to use numbers from the North American Numbering Plan with area codes from the different parts of the US regardless of their location. "87810" is a global numbering resource, so the concept of area code is no longer relevant. At the Spring 2003 VON conference ( http://www.von.com ) in San Jose April 1-3, Telekom Austria and Free World Dialup will show a global number that is not using "borrowed" numbers from existing number pool allocations, but with the use of ENUM, the ability for Internet Telephony finally to be a peer to the traditional telephone line." ENUM is much more than a single phone number; it makes it possible to truly marry Internet and PSTN signaling for the purpose of stating preferred communication media. According to Harald Hauser, Vice-Chair of VISIONng the value of ENUM is now being realized and it is getting considerable traction throughout the industry. Contrary to concerns about ENUM will be used to invade privacy, ENUM as delivered by the VISIONng members, allows the end user to have more control of the when where and how of communication. For example, I can set in place my preferences for family to be able to see my presence on Instant Messaging, friends to leave messages on my private e-mail and coworkers to reach me on my cell. I can even give a method of override via SMS to people who need to reach me in emergencies", said Herwart Wermescher chairman of VISIONng, and Solution Leader for BearingPoint VoIP.