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Networking Communications The Internet Technology

Australia Trials Phone To IP Service 76

Posted by Zonk from the telemarketers-only-get-access-to-my-email-spam dept.
daria42 writes "Australia is doing trial runs with a technology which could connect conventional phone numbers with Web pages, Internet fax services and other online resources. Subscribers to an ENUM service register their other contact details, then set up rules that control how and when calls to their phone are routed. For example, calls from anybody but close family could be routed straight to voicemail between 6pm and 11pm. Because it connects to any IP service, incoming callers could also use phone numbers to access Web sites, the Skype VoIP application, faxes and other applications."
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Australia Trials Phone To IP Service More

Australia Trials Phone To IP Service

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  • Thailand did this 6 months ago!
    • as IT Minister Senator Helen Coonan kicked off a year-long trial on Thursday in Melbourne.
      They actually have an IT minister. Does canada and the U.S have that. That is Sick!!
    • I havent seen VoIP anywhere in Australia yet...
  • For example, calls from anybody but close family could be routed straight to voicemail between 6pm and 11pm.

    That way, when a family member has been arrested for sharing too many files on the Internet and they make their one phone call from jail to you, they'll get your voice mail.

    But seriously... I know most people do it but I've never gotten screening one's phone calls. My experience with the federal and state "do not call lists" has been very positive so I literally get no sales calls any more. Th
    • Most people dont screen their calls to block out telemarketers and such, but rather to avoid using the phone at certain times. For example, if i am in a meeting i wont answer the phone from anyone besides my girlfriend, spouse, etc. Or if im at work i might want to take close family and friends calls, and co workers, but no one else. Its not because I dont want to talk to someone, its because I dont want to talk to them right now, and some people dont seem to understand the fact that we arent available to
      • "The last thing I want is one of the "buds" calling up wanting to talk about getting hammered this weekend."

        Wow, man, you aren't much of a bud then, huh?

        I hope for your sake that your "buds" don't know your /. id...

        • Consider the fact that when you are at work actually working the last thing you need is your friends calling you up and distracting you. They can very easily do so after work.
          • Nobody ever says on their death bed, "I wish I had worked more."

            Here are a few other things that have never been said on a death bed:

            1) I wish I had drank fewer beers
            2) I wish I had had less sex
            3) I wish I had tried fewer cuisines
            4) I wish I had spent less time with my friends
            5) I wish I had been a better corporate pogue

            You only live once, so answer your buds when they call. I pity the person whose phone stops ringing...

      • Plus, if you're out with your girlfriend you can leave a special message for your wife, and visa vera.
  • Will this mean my phone number is as available to spammers as my email adress is?
  • I wouldn't have to look at excessive flash animated banners anymore...

  • Adventures in improper English, part 86 (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Trial" is not a verb, you illiterate simp.

  • VoIP will be dead in 6 months! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:08AM (#12451177)
    Sure, go ahead and laugh at me. You think that VoIP is going to take over the world and put the phone company out of business, and I am some clueless nutcase. Right?

    The fact is that the popularity and ubiquity of VoIP is going to increase because of all the hype. But hype won't be able to overcome the fact that quality isn't as good as the PSTN. Hype won't be able to hide that 911 loaction can't work without seriously impairing theusefullness of VoIP. And, most important of all, hype won't be able to hide the security problems with VoIP.

    How long are you going to continue using VoIP when some script kiddie that you pissed off on IRC DDoSes your phone? Who's going to keep on using VoIP when the latest Outlook worm prevents them form making phone calls for the next two days? Who's going to keep VoIP when they realize that I, or anyone else can listen in on their calls right this minute?

    VoIP is great. I use it right now. But, I haven't cut the PSTN cord and I won't cut the PSTN cord for VoIP. It's just too dangerous and it'll only be another 6 months before disaster strikes and everyone realizes how dangerous it is.

    Think about it; 'Hello? Police? this is ...'. Script Kiddie says; 'Har har, I r0xorz!!!'

    6 Months

    • Agreed. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      People don't seem to realize that the phone companies have been using VoIP for years! That's right, Verizon was using VoIP in large scale production more than five years ago and so were many other phone companies. But, they were using it over their own private lines, not the Wild Wild West internet.

      VoiP cannot be reliable over a shared medium where there is no control. The phone companies know this already and the consumer and Vonages of the world are about to find out too. At that point, everyone will com
    • ..because then my DSL would stop working.
    • The important thing to remember when switching from PTSN to VoIP is to not rely on VoIP as your main means of communication to the outside world. Always have a backup (at least a pre-paid cell phone) in case of emergency. The reliability compared to PTSN isn't there, and I have no problem accepting that. I try to explain to everyone to be aware of the risks, that VoIP is not regulated the same way (if at all) as PTSN, and to think of VoIP as a cell phone; you're not always going to be able to use it.

      I c
    • Laugh all you want, but there's no way in hell I am going for SIP again.
      That's right SIP sucks for all the reasons stated above; security, DDOS, Spam etc..

      VoIP however doesn't need to suck. DDoSes are easily taken care of by NAT Firewalls.
      Security? Try breaking 256 bits AES with your leet AMD Fx-51.

      Spam? just lock out those who aren't explicity allowed.

      But I here you say, SIP cannot do all these thigns. And you're right, but VoIPSIp and Skype is also VoIP

      Skype takes care of all these little problems for
    • First of all, way too much VOIP equipment uses G.711 codecs, which are the raw 64kbps telephony interface that most of the world's wireline telephones use. Once you add all the headers, it tends to bloat to 80kbps or sometimes more.

      But even 8kbps G.729a codecs, which are the most common compression, are really just fine for most people most of the time. They're better than cellphone codecs, and most desktop VOIP equipment doesn't have tinny little microphones with background road noise drowning them out

  • ...was the simultaneous orgasm of every phone spammer in the world.

    Every day I get closer to building a secret bunker somewhere.

  • calling Google. Due to unusually heavy call volume your search will not be executed for approximately .31 seconds. We appreciate your call, please stay online for the next available operator.

    "Thank you for calling Google, how can I help you?"

    "ummm... hi... I'd like to search for anime boobs"

    "Alright, lets see here is the first result out of 807,000 in .31 seconds. Anime Pics. drink my piss hentai pokemon free asian videos. Rikku hentai anime demons inuyasha hentai, hardcore nude anime boobs free shit

    • Re:Thank you for... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by generic-man ( 33649 )
      Google used to have a search by telephone [google.com] service where you called in, said a series of search terms, and watched a results page refresh. Looks like they've taken it down, though.
      • I guess I really don't see the point, unless you can't type? or maybe you want to provide a search page for someone else?

        Seems more like wow that's cool factor than anything of use.

        I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up the mouse, and in a scottish brogue say "Computer? Computer!?" and get a response...
        • Google Voice was surprisingly good at spelling. I tossed it proper names, foreign names, etc., and it got them right every time. Google didn't actually give any feedback on the phone besides "wait for the screen to refresh."

          I suspect they took it down because it was getting to be too much of a strain on phone lines. Either that or they had a really good speller manning the phones and typing things in.
  • pick up the phone, hit 0 and say "Operator! Connect me to SlashDot.com! I've got a tin foil hat warning!" -Rick
  • "BOOOOOP. You have 19,347,802,206,103 new messages. You have 3 old messages. Press 7 to delete."

  • Hypothetical SPAMMER Scenario (Score:5, Funny)

    by LegendOfLink ( 574790 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:10AM (#12451202) Homepage
    You: *picks up phone* Hello?

    SPAMMER: Hey Buddy, your woman wants a big one.

    You: What?! Who is this? Remove me from your... *beeping* Oh wait a sec, I've got a another call. *click* Hello?

    SPAMMER 2: Hi, this is Charles Taylor from Liberia, I need to use your bank account...

    You: WTF!? STOP..*beep beep* Hold on. *click*

    SPAMMER 3: Hi, thanks for the advice. Could you open this file immediately?

    • I get that now on my landline! Spam messages are left on my voicemail and I'm forced to ignore anyone with a "Private Name" call id.

      Now they're even calling my cell phone (which I thought was illegal) with a recorded "You have won!". I really feel like invoicing them for the $0.25 in airtime charges, just to take on the overhead of paying a small invoice.

  • Crikey! An ENUM e164.arpa FAQ (Score:3, Informative)

    by rewinn ( 647614 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:12AM (#12451216) Homepage
    http://www.enum.com.au/faqs.htm [enum.com.au] answered a lot of questions

    (I'm not gonna pretend that I understood all the answers ...)

  • Wrong Way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phat_Tony ( 661117 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:16AM (#12451242)
    This is neat, but they're going the wrong direction. Memorizing a 10-digit number instead of the word "Google" isn't making things much easier for people

    I want the opposite: I want my phone number to be arbitrary text of my choosing. I want the whole phone system to use good voice recognition, so that any time I want to call anyone, if I can remember their phone-moniker, all I have to do is say it into the phone. A DNS-like system will go reference this to their actual phone number, IP address, or whatever address and protocol they choose to use for voice communications, and connect me.

    • I disagree - for some reason people find phone numbers far easier to remember than email addresses, witness the number of people that try to email using a phone number for the address.

      Its odd but there you are, maybe its because phone numbers are unambiguous, numbers are numbers. Words have many different spellings, especially on the web :)

      • Re:Wrong Way (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Phat_Tony ( 661117 )
        Email addresses aren't a good representative for all text. I may only have four or five email addresses memorized (although that's due in good measure to the fact that my email program knows them all and associates them with names and nicknames in its own DNS-like system), but I have hundreds of website addresses memorized, compared to only a couple of dozen phone numbers. Look at how many people's names a person knows, or at their vocabularies, compared to how many numbers they have memorized. I stand by t

    • Re:Wrong Way (Score:3, Informative)

      by wackysootroom ( 243310 )
      Memorizing a 10-digit number instead of the word "Google" isn't making things much easier for people

      That's not really all that ENUM does. ENUM isn't grown up yet, but think of it as a DNS for phone numbers and then some. You wouldn't want to have to type in the IP address every time you wanted to view a web page, would you? ENUM does the same for telephony as DNS does for the web. The strongest use of ENUM, IMHO will be the ability to "follow" someone no matter what phone they're on based upon the rules t
    • I very much agree. I think having to memorize numbers is silly. I think having little number pads on phones is silly. Most cell-phone users only use the number pad to enter numbers the first time, and then just use their built-in directory. It would be so much easier if those tiny little buttons were gone and I could (reliably) speak the address/number/name of someone.

      I want my phone number to be arbitrary text of my choosing

      I'm not sure how it could be left up to the individual users. Even with a DN
    • You missed the point of ENUM. IMHO there are three types of ENUM applications:

      a) Calls from the PSTN to VoIP: You only can dial numbers and not URIs on more than a billion handsets which are out there.

      b) Calling someone where you don't know whether he's on VoIP or not. You give your PBX (or softphone) a telephone number and it finds out via ENUM which is the best way to call

      c) Retrieving additional info concerning a phone number. e.g. finding a URL for a photo to display on a headset on an incoming call.
  • Didn't they use to call that dialup?

  • DUNDi (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kalugen ( 531230 ) <kalugen@gdr.nMOSCOWet minus city> on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:29AM (#12451351)
    Also relevant: http://www.dundi.com/ [dundi.com]
    "DUNDi is a peer-to-peer system for locating Internet gateways to telephony services. Unlike traditional centralized services (such as the remarkably simple and concise ENUM standard), DUNDi is fully-distributed with no centralized authority whatsoever."
    • The ENUM folks have a technology that has no particular need to be centralized, but they keep insisting that there can be only one! and that they're in charge of the One True ENUM tree, and that everybody therefore must follow their sets of policies for number assignment, naming, legal contact information, permission to use numbers, etc. There's some convenience to having it centralized, but it also leads to new versions of the ICANN-vs-Verisign-vs-sane-people fights, and it's better to have policy and pra

  • Been there... (Score:2, Informative)

    by c_g_hills ( 110430 )
    It's not normally Australia lagging behind, but the UK have already done this and produced a report [ukenumgroup.org]. Particularly of note is the assertion that there needs to be a process put in place to identify who actually owns each number. The telcos cannot be relied upon because they are either lazy, or simply do not want to lose a revenue stream.
  • So the plan is to take nice human-readable strings (like 'slashdot.org') and replace them with utterly incomprehensible 10 to 14 digit numbers?

    Mmmm'K.

    How about using a URL to dial phones? Wouldn't that make more sense?

    'phone.sjbaker.org' and 'fax.sjbaker.org' as well as 'www.sjbaker.org' ?

    • But you're not the only S.J.Baker on the Internet -- just the first to register his name as a .org domain. Good move. :)

      The plan ages ago was to create some kind of hierarchy: us.az.phoenix.elm-street.542.john-smith, for example, to describe everyone. Then you could just bookmark your favorite people, and it would be the same net effect as putting all those 10-digit numbers in a phone book. Services like AIM and Skype rely on usernames to be unique, and those too become hard to join when you have millio
  • This seems like a complete waste to me. All I want is a phone number that rings my cell phone. That's it. I can see the ability to route certain numbers to voicemail at certain times might be handy, or permanently block certain numbers, but it seems like that could be handled by the phone itself.

    I think this is going to be one more thing that takes more effort to use than the benefits it will provide.
  • My new phone-to-ip number is 'slashdot' in the 'com' area code. Oh, but don't forget to dial 'www' to get an outside line.

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