We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded the contract to run the Tier 1 registry for UK ENUM, a standard that will unify the telephone numbering system with the Internet's Domain Name System.

ENUM is potentially an important part of the convergence of regular telephone services and Internet telephony and it may enable businesses to benefit from cheaper or even free telephone calls in the near future. It is a suite of protocols that makes it possible to relate a domain name to a telephone number, and then use that domain name to identify various communications devices such as fax, mobile phone, voice-mail, email, IP telephony addresses or web pages.

The Tier 1 registry for UK ENUM was awarded to us by the UK ENUM Consortium (UKEC), a limited company set up with the recognition of the BERR (formerly the DTI) to administer the UK ENUM top level domain. We won the contract based on our understanding of the issues and challenges relating to best practice management of a top level domain. As part of the process of establishing the registry we will be joining the International Telecommunication Union, Telecommunication Standardization Sector, ITU-T.

ENUM will make it possible to link different VoIP servers so that telephones within businesses that use VoIP technology can connect to businesses who use other VoIP providers via the Internet. As a result, telephone calls between businesses using this technology will be much cheaper or possibly even free, because there will be no need to connect to the telephone network for the call.