ENUM CONTROL RESIDES IN ICANN REGISTRY CONTRACTS

Two weeks ago Senator Conrad Burns, the Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, wrote the Commerce Secretary questioning both the adequacy of ICANN's performance and the legality of ICANN's relations with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

On Friday Rep. Billy Tauzin, the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, John Dingell, ranking Democrat, and Fred Upton, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Edward Markey (the ranking subcommittee Democrat) asked for greater oversight of ICANN decision-making processes, and the new VeriSign contract in particular, scheduled to come before the ICANN board next week.

But while Congress and critics focused on the too-sweet deal ICANN offered to VeriSign, they may have missed a potential ICANN coup, embedded in the ICANN website, that could eclipse the value and significance of VeriSign's proposed extended dot com dominance.

ICANN is attempting to capture policy control of ENUM by virtue of language in its new gTLD Registry contracts.

The E.164 international public telecommunication numbering plan is a politically significant numbering resource with direct implications of national sovereignty. It is subject to a multitude of national approaches, regulatory provisions, and, in some cases, multilateral treaty provisions. The applicable international standards body is the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In the U.S. telephone numbering is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

ENUM folds telephone numbers into the DNS - the domain name system of the internet.

From a telephony perspective the internet is merely a provisioning tool for telephone numbers and services. But once entered into the DNS, those phone numbers simultaneously become domain names. It is in this domain name state that revenue-generating service is performed, with legacy telephony relegated to number assignment and verification.

ENUM service provisioning rides on the DNS infrastructure, and for database commodity businesses like VeriSign, the database potential alone is priceless. "There are 250 million telephones in the U.S. If 1% of those numbers were registered as Enum records, that would be 2.5 million registrations," says Pat Conley, director of business development at VeriSign's Global Registry Services division in a recent Network World article. "We think [Enum] could be a big opportunity around the globe."

Early ENUM development participant Richard Shockey, now employed by ENUM contender NeuStar, in October, 1999 said, "[ENUM] clearly touches on [the ITU's] "space," ... What is the effect of putting billions of numbers into the existing DNS system? Security, authorization, number ownership and control."

Control is now quietly taking center stage behind ICANN's contract props.

Last November in Marina Del Rey, ICANN appeared to defer to the ITU as new TLD registry applicants were rejected for competing with the ITU's ENUM plans.

But ICANN regulates by contract.

ICANN's Information on the Proposed VeriSign Agreements under "FAQ #19: Why is it important to revise the agreements to clarify the types of services that they cover?" says,

"ICANN management believes that, when a registry operator seeks to provide services by leveraging the "DNS infrastructure" that it exclusively operates under its registry agreement with ICANN, those services should be subject to technical requirements and other policies developed through the ICANN process...Concerns have been voiced that the ENUM World initiative, depending on how it develops, may impair a sound technical enum implementation based on open and non-proprietary standards. To address concerns of this type, the new unsponsored TLD Registry Agreement covers registry services provided by the registry operator concerning "Registered Names," whether they are at the second or a lower level."

Intention revealed. Path? The insidious understated simplicity of the Proposed Unsponsored TLD Agreement for the new TLD registries, which specifies:

Paragraph 3.2. Functional Specifications for Registry Services. All Registry Services provided by Registry Operator shall be provided under this Agreement and shall meet the functional specifications established by ICANN.

Under current plans ENUM domain names are expected to be assigned in the .arpa TLD. While ICANN's control over this domain is in some dispute, undisputed is ICANN's regulatory control over accredited registries and registrars.

"I would think there would be a new registry agreement for .arpa," said Register.com Director of Policy and Public Affairs Elana Broitman. "We need to figure out how to strike the balance between stability and market-driven innovation," though she conceded, "ICANN may ultimately play an oversight or advisory role."

But even if ICANN doesn't appropriate .arpa, it would seem that no ICANN-accredited registry can either, unless they're willing to apply ICANN policies to their ENUM operations.

What would this mean in practical terms for the ENUM industry and users? The clash of disparate policies covering fundamental issues like whois, privacy, trademark and disputes.

"It's not apparent why anyone should [regulate ENUM]," Tony Rutkowski, Vice President for Internet Strategy at VeriSign, Inc. told ICB after mentioning ICANN's "assertion of authority over ENUM provisioning by virtue of its posting on the ICANN website," at this week's Study Group A ENUM meeting in Washington.

The Study Group excluded the unexpected ICANN position from its agenda as beyond its mandate, though Rutkowski pointed out to ICB that ENUM is also "outside the ITU's jurisdiction," which the ENUM working and study groups have embraced. "These kinds of functions have never been performed by any ITU Secretariat even in highly regulated telecommunications eras over the past 150 years."

"It seems inappropriate for anybody at this stage to be interfering with the marketplace in dealing with commercial implementations of a technology/technique of this nature, for which a specification was just cobbled together (substantially based on VeriSign developed technology) just a few months ago," added Rutkowski, whose previous employment includes the ITU and the FCC. "No significant test has even been done." VeriSign and Telcordia announced the opening of the first public ENUM trial in December, 2000.

VeriSign rival NeuStar submits that "the United States Government needs to act quickly ... establishing a single registry for the United States portions of the NANP is of utmost importance for efficient administration of ENUM in the United States."

NeuStar is the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) Administrator, and was recently contracted to manage the European Telephony Numbering Space (ETNS).*

NeuStar Senior Technical Industry Liaison and ENUM Co-chair Richard Shockey's version of ENUM administration falls along more accepted party lines - give or take. "The ITU would not have regulatory control," Shockey tells ICB, saying "control and policy is a Nation State issue. The ITU's only real role is to certify that a request for inclusion or exclusion to the zone is in fact legitmate....the ITU is the holder of E.164 and the keeper of the list of National Regulatory authorities."

He adds, "That means what happens in the US is a US government issue. Period."

Well, ICANN is a US government contractor. Controversial, but for now at least, keeper of all DNS things accredited.

Could ICANN insistance on policy control over .arpa (or .ENUMwhatever) fuel growth of alternative root server registries, which aren't under contract to ICANN? Mark Harris, ENUM working group participant and head of the newly formed International Internet Telephone Organization said "yes"... ditto for whether ICANN insistance on policy control over .arpa (or .ENUMwhatever) could help dissuade ccTLD registries from entering into contracts with ICANN.

VeriSign's Tony Rutkowski's telling reply? A pronounced "no comment."

ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf (usually generous with prompt reply) as well as ENUM participants from AT&T, Worldcom, and Illuminet, did not respond to ICB requests for comment.

*In light of ENUM's political and technical significance globally, its worth noting that mammoth US government contractor SAIC owns Network Solutions/VeriSign and Telcordia and is partnered with Lockheed Martin, which is NeuStar pre name change. Via its ownership of NSI and VeriSign, SAIC also has too many connections to ICANN to list here.

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