Blog Sponsored by Neustar

The future of communications will converge on the Internet Protocol (IP). Voice is no longer king but “one of many? channels of communication making it the medium of last resort especially for the younger generation as they contact to their peers through Facebook, Short Message Service (SMS), Twitter and many other channels.1 To avoid the siphoning of value, operators must focus on the service experience specifically in relation to the communications mechanisms, creating value through connectivity and security of service. Operators need to rapidly build out flexible new services on top of mobile broadband to reduce the risk of becoming a commodity bit pipe for over the top services and remain significant to the communications experience of customers.

Operators need to bolster margins with the introduction of new value-add services such as, presence enhanced phone books, rich media sharing (video, images, other content), interactive multi-user chat blended with traditional SMS, multi-media messaging services (MMS), along with voice and video calling services to create a multi-media telephony paradigm. Each of these new IP-based services has its own interworking and addressing as well as service gateways in the distant network which need to be discovered to enable inter-networking.

Carrier Infrastructure ENUM is the preferred method to interconnect and is critical for IP-based communications and information exchange. However, standardized Carrier Infrastructure ENUM will take time to materialize and adoption will vary by region, country and specific applications as regulatory, technology, and business model hurdles still exist. The adoption of next-generation IP-based services is at serious risk without a globally accessible ENUM solution.

Benefits delivered with a Global ENUM architecture:

For more information, download
Neustar’s Global ENUM White Paper.

— Gary Zimmerman, Director of Product Marketing, Neustar