Potential applications
As with the introduction of mobile telephony and the Internet, the first step is to create the infrastructure. Then the applications can follow. Where ENUM is concerned, infrastructure development consisted mainly of setting up and operationalising the Dutch ENUM registry (the ENUM database and management of the Dutch ENUM zone).
The Internet and the telecom networks are there already, of course. ENUM will encourage telecom firms, Internet and ICT providers, hard/software suppliers and others to introduce clever and useful applications to the market. Applications might include alert systems, software that can synchronise the diaries of several people via several media, news alerts, automated forwarding systems and cheapest-contact-option selectors.
So ENUM will make it easier - and probably much cheaper - to consult websites by phone, for instance. Simply by forming a bridge between the Internet and telephony.
Here are just a few of the things that could be possible:
- When you go on holiday, you use ENUM to specify that e-mail and phone calls from certain people should be sent to your mobile phone as spoken messages, while all other incoming communications are forwarded to a colleague's e-mailbox.
- The client you are driving to visit has recently moved to new offices. You speak the client's name into your navigation system, which uses the ENUM application to automatically look up the address and direct you to the right place.
- You want to fix up a get-together with a few friends, who have allowed you access to their diaries. Even though you and your friends use various programs to manage your diaries, the ENUM application checks everyone's commitments and suggests a number of times when you are all free.
- An important phone call is expected on a day when you're going to be tied up in a meeting much of the time. ENUM can be used to specify that just that one call will be forwarded to your mobile, while all the others go to your voice mailbox or secretary.
- From a payphone in a French village, you call a colleague who has an ultra-modern Internet phone. ENUM provides an interface between the old analogue telephony system and VoIP technology.
- You need to send a product to a client whom you have just spoken to on your mobile. No other contact details are needed: from the client's phone number, an ENUM application can provide the information required to dispatch the product by post, send an e-mail confirmation message and organise the billing.
- While working on location, you are contactable only by mobile, but urgently need to talk something over with a colleague. Using ENUM, your texts can be delivered via your colleague's instant messaging application, and her IM replies routed to your mobile. An application also indicates when your colleague is free to ‘chat' in this way.