CZ.NIC Introduced the ENUM System at the Modern Networking Solutions Conference

The CZ.NIC association, administrator of the CZ national domain, presented benefits of the ENUM technology to the visitors of the conference titled Modern Networking Solutions, which took place on 28th March in the CITY conference center at Pankrác.

The CZ.NIC association, administrator of the CZ national domain, presented benefits of the ENUM technology to the visitors of the conference titled Modern Networking Solutions, which took place on 28th March in the CITY conference center at Pankrác. Within one of the conference papers, the principle of the Internet phone calls made with ENUM has been explained and prerequisites needed to utilize ENUM, lowering phone costs, have been listed.

"The great interest of the conference participants in this new opportunity to cut down on calls costs has been a pleasant surprise to me," commented Pavel Tůma, manager of the ENUM project in the CZ.NIC association. "The CZ.NIC association has prepared all prerequisites for commercial utilization of the ENUM technology. It is extremely easy to deploy ENUM telephony in companies. Besides, companies with their private branch exchanges connected to the Internet do not even need to rely on the ENUM system support on the part of their telecommunication operators."

ENUM in the Czech Republic
The CZ.NIC association has launched the commercial operation of the ENUM system on this year's 22 January. Almost 2,500 ENUM domains have been registered in the Czech Republic so far, representing nearly 540,000 phone numbers. This number of domains positions the Czech Republic among the largest ENUM domain registers in the world. ENUM domains are registered by nine registrars and supported by two telecommunication operators in their networks, while several additional operators are just getting ready to offer the support. The first telecommunication operator to support ENUM in its network, which has registered ENUM domains for all of its customers, is – from the beginning of this year – IPEX.

From the European countries, the ENUM system is employed also in Austria, Germany, Poland, Finland, Romania, and Switzerland; testing operation is in progress in several other countries. National ENUM domains are delegated in virtually all European countries.

About ENUM
Utilizing advantages of the standard as well as IP telephony, the ENUM system enables users of both fixed and mobile phone numbers to register a special ENUM domain for each of these numbers, containing information on how to reach the number via Internet. Numbers with ENUM domains can then be called for free via the Internet, irrespective of the telecommunication operator's network the number is located in (including foreign networks). The ENUM system is already operational in several neighboring countries (e.g. Germany and Austria). In the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Informatics appointed the CZ.NIC association to establish and administer this system. To learn more about the ENUM system, go to http://enum.nic.cz.