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Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, & Registering telephone Numbers
charter-ietf-modern-00-02

The information below is for an older proposed charter
Document Proposed charter Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, & Registering telephone Numbers WG (modern) Snapshot
Title Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, & Registering telephone Numbers
Last updated 2015-06-03
State Start Chartering/Rechartering (Internal Steering Group/IAB Review)
WG State Proposed
IESG Responsible AD Adam Roach
Charter edit AD Alissa Cooper
Send notices to "Tom McGarry" <tom.mcgarry@neustar.biz>, "Steve Donovan" <srdonovan@usdonovans.com>, "Alissa Cooper" <alissa@cooperw.in>, ben@nostrum.com

charter-ietf-modern-00-02

The MODERN working group will define a set of Internet-based mechanisms for the purposes of managing and resolving telephone numbers (TNs) in an IP environment. Existing mechanisms for these purposes face obsolescence as the voice communications infrastructure evolves to IP technology and new applications for TNs become possible. The traditional model of a TN having an association to a single service provider and a single application is breaking down. Its use as a network locator is going away, but its use as an identifier for an individual or an organization will remain for some time. Devices, applications, and network tools increasingly need to manage TNs, including requesting and acquiring TN delegations from authorities. A sample of problems with existing mechanisms include:

  • lack of flexibility (for example, it can be difficult to add fields without a very elaborate and lengthy process typically spanning years)

  • lack of distribution (for example, it is hard or impossible to have more than one administrator for each database)

  • complexity (leading, for example, to a fair amount of rural call completion problems which aren't helped by small providers struggling to keep numbers straight)

  • difficulty of adopting more modern allocation (e.g., "blocks" of 1) and porting mechanisms

The working group will define an information management framework for the roles and functions involved in associating information with one or more TNs in an IP environment. The working group will also identify protocol mechanisms to support the interactions between the functions defined by the framework. This includes either recommending or defining protocol mechanisms for acquiring, associating and resolving TNs, with a preference for use of existing protocol mechanisms. The protocol mechanism for acquiring TNs will provide an enrollment process for the entities that use and manage TNs. TNs may either be managed in a hierarchical tree, or in a distributed registry. Privacy of the managed data and security of the resource will be primary considerations. The protocol mechanism for resolving TNs will allow entities such as service providers, devices, and
applications to access data related to TNs. Maintaining reliability, real time application performance, security and privacy are primary considerations. The working group will take into consideration existing IETF work including ENUM, SPEERMINT, DRINKS and SCIM.

The work of this group will focus on TNs, as defined in RFC3966, and blocks of TNs, that are used to initiate communication with another user of a service. The work is motivated by the changing telecom environment and interest expressed by telecommunications industry regulators to support more flexible regulatory models than exist today. There is an expectation that aspects of the architecture and protocols defined by the working group will be reusable for other user-focused identifiers. Any such extensions or reuse of MODERN mechanisms are out of scope for the MODERN working group. Solutions and mechanisms created by the working group will be flexible enough to accommodate different policies, e.g., by different regulatory agencies.

The work group will deliver the following:

  • An architecture overview, including high level requirements and security/privacy considerations

  • A description of the enrollment processes for existing and new TNs including any modifications to metadata related to those TNs

  • A description of protocol mechanisms for accessing contact information associated with enrollments

  • A description of mechanisms for resolving information related to TNs