VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

« Proposed changes to the Numbering Plan in relation to the management of geographic numbers
and their use by small carriage service providers, including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoiP)
providers”

The Voice on the Net Coalition Europe (“VON”) welcomes the opportunity to comment on ACMA’s
Numbering Discussion Paper (hereafter “the Paper”).
As pointed out in ACMA’s Paper, the existing Australian Numbering Plan dates back to 1997 and
“while intended to be technology neutral, it applied to services that existed solely in the Public
Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) environment” (pg. 3 of the Paper).

To put this in perspective, it can be useful to consider that in 1997, Google had not yet been
founded, nor Skype or most of the Members of the VON Coalition. Things have changed drastically
since then, and consumers have benefitted of these changes were policy has been put in place to
encourage and support innovation.

Undoubtedly the Internet raises pressure on the existing numbering plan. Nevertheless, the Internet
also creates a tremendous opportunity for new services and applications. One of the two major
aspects of ACMA’s mandate is to support the development of an innovative, diverse, efficient and
competitive industry through a healthy market (in addition to achieving social policy objectives).

A well designed and forward looking numbering plan will accommodate growth in the market, bring
consumer benefits and promote competition.

Although ACMA’s discussion paper sounds quite ambitious and some of its proposals have certain
merits, VON believes that the amendments to the numbering plan proposed by ACMA are too
limited to encourage new services and application and enhance the contribution of VoIP players to
the benefit of Australian consumers and professional users.

Numbers have been, are and will remain a critical resource for communication services and
applications. Most national numbering plans, devised more than 30 years ago, are unlikely to be
adequate to cope with new trends and developments.

In general, VON believes that ACMA’s propositions in the Paper do not entirely and/or sufficiently
embrace these new evolutions such as the high growth in demand for numbers, proliferation of new
services and applications, market liberalisation, customer expectations, and an expansion in the
finality of numbers (from location identifiers to personal and service identifiers and access codes to
new applications.

1
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

CHANGES TO THE NUMBERING PLAN

1. Should the Numbering Plan be amended to allow and/or required the issue and use of a
unique number to a VoiP-Out services? If not what sort of number should a VoiP-Out
service be able to use?

In general, VON believes that no separate numbering range should be required for new innovative
services and applications, including offerings that make use of VoIP to make outbound calls.
Experience from other countries shows that consumers are reluctant to call to (or call back to) new
numbers (as there is uncertainty about the retail price) or switch to new numbers. In addition,
established operators are slow in implementing new numbering ranges (and in some cases they
refuse unless required to do so). This seems to unfortunately be the case also in Australia: whilst
LICS numbers (0550 X) were made available somewhere in the beginning of 2008, ACMA concludes
in its discussion paper that today (one year later) “interconnect and terminating agreements have
yet to be established for the LICS range”. Such a delay in a sector that changes constantly and at an
increasingly rapid pace creates irredeemable damages.

VON believes that it would not be appropriate to determine and impose the use of any number,
number range or identifier for “VoIP-Out services” or any services and applications that enable
outbound calls, as this entails risks of forcing all providers into a particular business model and into a
particular ‘expectations model’, with associated procedures and costs, which may prevent the
emergence of innovative uses of VoIP technology. We would also add that VoIP technology can be
used to develop not only ‘fixed telephone service-style’ usage scenarios, but also very different
usage scenarios (e.g. outbound communications (not only voice) initiated by humans or machines
from software applications on PCs, consoles, mobile devices, etc.) with no predetermined usage
pattern or location expectation.

Furthermore, many ‘do it yourself’ implementations of VoIP technology already exist, including open
source software for individual and for professional uses (e.g. PBXes), and new ones are emerging
every day. These developments may be unnecessarily restrained if the association of a particular
number, number range, or identifier would be required from end-users developing their own
solutions or implementing third-party solutions or hardware/software combinations.

In summary, VON is of the opinion that ACMA’s proposal is rooted in a traditional ‘Plain Old
Telephony Services’ paradigm and is unsuitable to accommodate current and future developments
that are and will be highly beneficial to Australia’s citizens, public administration and economy.

2. Should the location information in geographic numbers be preserved or discarded?

In VON’s opinion, location information of geographic numbers should be discarded.

Location information of geographic numbers is a legacy from the Plain Old Telephony Services,
where habits were not what they are today. In recent years, people have become more flexible,

2
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

ready to move and travel at any time. Mobile phones are slowly overtaking fixed phones and calling
your plumber happens more often than not on his mobile phone. Soon, your toilet will be able to call
the plumber on its own initiative.

This important change in the general way of life, and the evolution of technology, have an impact on
the features customers are demanding. Both business and residential customers request innovative
possibilities including nomadicity. Today, the relevance of geographic numbers is fading, services are
no longer linked to the location information, rather to personal information and service and
application features.

In its opening remarks, ACMA quotes research it will publish in early 2009 that would indicate that
Australians still seem to consider location information important in terms of numbering. Obviously,
VON cannot comment on the specifics of this research but one can query if linking the importance
attributed to location information to the cost of a call is an appropriate way of putting this question,
especially when considering VoIP. In many cases, VoIP tends to enable packages in which the price
for communications is regardless of location across the world, and thus would alleviate these
concerns quite easily.

In terms of attributing importance to the location of the person being called, that seems at odds
with the increasing switch to mobile phones as an alternative to fixed lines. Mobile Internet devices
will only enhance that trend. It also seems in contradiction with the fact that many consumers
increasingly want to be connected all the time and everywhere, which usually implies increased
mobility.

Moreover, in reality geographic numbers are increasingly not representative of the location of a
called party: for example, as appropriately pointed out by ACMA, with call forwarding, a call to a
number supposedly located in a specific geographic region, could very well be forwarded to an
entirely different place.

This link to geographic locations disappears even more when thinking of an NGN environment,
characterised by the switch to an all IP world.

Furthermore, VON believes that preserving location information in geographic numbers would keep
an additional barrier for new entrants, especially those providing innovative services and
applications and including use of geographic numbers, because users demand geographic numbers.

The examples given in the ACMA Paper (call forwarding and out of area number) are just two
examples demonstrating that it is no longer tenable to preserve location information in geographic
numbers. The reason why geographic numbers are mostly used by residential and business
customers is because of the retail price transparency.

Therefore, VON strongly encourages ACMA to focus its attention on ensuring the fullest possible
retail price transparency, rather than creating additional obligations on usage of certain numbers,
and to remove the link between location information in geographic numbers.

3
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

3. If the location information is preserved, should ACMA withdraw numbers from CSPs who
issue numbers inconsistently with the rules?

VON believes that it is in the interest of Australian citizens and the economy for ACMA to focus its
attention on putting in place the building blocks of a forward looking framework for all information
society services, that focuses on delivering choice and innovation to consumers, rather than sticking
to obsolete principles, with the ensuing compliance issues.

VON therefore considers that the way forward is discarding location information, and that the
suggested alternatives will benefit no one.

4. Should the option for providing an out of area number be extended or removed?

To increase regulatory certainty, ACMA is considering amending the numbering plan to ensure all
geographical numbers are issued consistently with the locations to which the numbers are allocated.
The proposal would preclude CSPs from offering a randomly selected or inappropriate geographical
number to their customers.

For the reasons stated above, the option for providing an out of area number should be kept, even
extended to other situations and the location information in geographic numbers should be
discarded.

More importantly, ACMA should undertake a profound review of its Numbering plan, to truly
make it technology neutral. We refer you to our answer to Question 6 for more details.

5. ACMA wants to increase the transparency of the movement of numbers to facilitate

compliance with the rules in the Numbering Plan – is the process described in the paper
the best approach?

VON welcomes ACMA’s considerations with regard to move of numbers as numbers will increasingly
be a critical resource for communication services and applications. VON agrees that ACMA should
support the application of the regulatory framework in a manner that incurs the least regulatory
burden on CSPs (and any others, including end-users self-providing VoIP solutions).

Small CSPs (especially small VoIP service providers) should be in a position continue to enter into
commercial interconnect arrangements with larger CSPs that have been allocated numbers by ACMA
for the supply of numbers to the small CSP so they, in turn, can provide services to the public. Similar
rights should exist for Internet applications that require numbering resources, and for end-users and
other entities self-providing their communications capabilities.

4
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

In the approach proposed by ACMA, the primary assignee (large CSPs) stays the interface for the
numbers. The assignee exactly knows to whom the resources have been allocated and, upon ACMA’s
request, can provide this information. VON does not believe that entering the movement of
numbering resources into a specific database would increase regulatory certainty regarding the
responsibilities of each CSP in the chain to ensure the final issue and use of the numbers in
compliance with the rules in the Numbering Plan.

Rather each CSP and other entity or person requiring numbering resources, at each level (primary,
secondary etc) needs to certify (or to agree in its contract) that it has read and will comply to the
Numbering Rules and may be held accountable for its (non)-compliance towards its supplier and
ACMA. The market rationale imposes the transit or final allocatee to be aware and to comply with
the regulatory restrictions or interdictions.

This market approach that leaves market forces to handle compliance and only intervenes from a
regulatory standpoint in case of a relevant breach (ex-post regulation) seems the most efficient way
forward. An ex ante regulation would add unnecessary burden to the administration of numbering
resources for small CSPs and other entities or persons requiring numbering resources, and would not
allow ACMA to ensure that consumers fully benefit from a full array of applications and services.

6. Are there other approaches to these problems that ACMA should consider?

ACMA claims that its numbering plan abides by the principle of technology neutrality. The principle
of technology neutrality (that regulation should not favour any particular type of technology) is a key
aspect of many regulatory frameworks. Technology neutrality requires that ACMA should not take
into consideration the technology used to deliver a particular service, application or solution.

In terms of numbering, it has long been considered that the primary distinguishing feature of
geographic numbering is that is has geographic significance. This was linked to the fact that a
geographic number was in the past associated to a tariff range, an expected call quality and a
specific location of the recipient of the call.

In an IP world, many of these features are totally irrelevant. Currently, many providers of VoIP-
enabled offerings, provide the possibility to call for free or at very low flat fee tariffs that are the
same regardless of location. In parallel, people divert their fixed phones, or even abandon them to
exclusively use mobile phone.

In its September 2007 Report on “Consumer attitudes to take-up and use”1, ACMA itself pointed out
that 90% of household consumers have both a fixed line phone and mobile phone. Of those
households, 45% prefer to use mobiles for voice. Even more importantly, ACMA’s research indicated
that fixed line replacement was on the agenda of many phone users. A quarter of household
consumers indicated they would consider replacing their fixed-line service with another form of
communication, such as mobile phones, if the cost of mobile phones was reduced.

http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310210/telecomms_today_consumer_takeup_and_use_of_
tcomm_svces.pdf

5
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

This certainly seems to indicate consumers are not concerned with location information, but rather
with the cost of calling. VoIP often enables solutions that provide for cheaper and more innovative
ways of communicating. By putting forward an approach that seems to mainly consist of sticking to
traditional ways of approaching numbering, ACMA actually would create additional compliance costs
for smaller players, and thereby would fail to meet consumer expectations and impede desirable
innovations and developments.

The approach to numbering should not be one of obligations vs rewards. Nor should it be one that is
unable to encompass and embrace the imminent changes brought by convergence of all networks
and the switch to an all-IP environment, and the increasing role of Internet applications on fixed and
mobile devices. Instead of tinkering with its existing Numbering Plan, ACMA should step back and
consider reviewing more fundamentally its entire approach to numbering, through a dialogue
initiated with all stakeholders, including end-users.

7. How should the changes being considered be implemented : immediately, only apply to
new services, phased in over time, or another way?

As indicated above, VON would argue strongly against the proposed changes. Should ACMA wish to
nevertheless proceed, it should take full account of the risks of disruption to existing users, and
adaptation costs and times for providers.

OPTIONS TO FACILITATE COMPLIANCE

8. Which option do you think best allows small CSPs to comply with the Numbering Plan?

We refer you to our answer to question 6 for this matter.

9. If you are a small CSP who currently gets number from sources other than ACMA: Are you
able to source sufficient numbers to comply with rules in the Numbering Plan ie to provide
your customer with a number that is appropriate for the SZU in which they are located?
Would you source your numbers from SPINS if implemented?

In the event that SPINS were implemented, it is likely that only a limited amount of VoiP CSP would
use it, and that the smallest providers and entities or persons requiring numbering resources,
including end-user self-provision, would be prevented from developing and providing relevant and
desirable innovations, and this for technical and financial reasons:

• on the one hand, the small CSP primary allocatee of numbering resources, will need either a
direct interconnect (which lead to significant costs increase) or a carrier able to provide a
hosting network solution; and,

• on the other hand, SPINS would probably impose specific fees to be paid by small CSP (and
other entities and persons), which, depending of the amount, could be an important cost

6
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

burden that is un-proportional and excessive compared to what is paid under the present
situation.

Therefore VON does not see a SPINS solution for small CSPs (not to mention other interested
parties) as a cost-efficient nor effective solution.

10. If you are a large CSP who applies to ACMA for numbers: Are you planning to implement
technology to facilitate your customers who you on sell or move numbers to (i.e. small
CSPs) compliance with the Numbering Plan? If so what capabilities will the technology
have and when will it be implemented? If it received broad support would you be
prepared to work ACMA to implement SPINS?

VON has no comments on this issue as its members are not large CSPs.

11. What do you estimate to be the cost of establishing SPINS? Would there be other costs
associated with establishing SPINS e.g. costs borne by individual CSPs?

VON does not consider the SPINS system as adequate.

12. Are there other technical or industry solutions to facilitate compliance by small CSPs and
increase efficiency of number allocation? Please detail.

We refer you to our answer to question 6.

13. If SPINS was established, should ACMA operate the service or outsource it?

Although VON does not consider the SPINS approach to be adequate, it would simply like to point
out that should it be implemented, it is to be hoped that the most cost-effective approach would be
adopted.

14. What are the merits of the different governance arrangements for SPINS discussed at
section C2, Attachment C

VON sees no merits in the SPINS approach, regardless of the adopted governance.

15. What are the merits of the different funding and charging arrangements for SPINS
discussed at section C3, Attachment C

VON sees no merits in the SPINS approach, regardless of the funding and charging arrangements.

OTHER

7
 VON Europe Comments on ACMA’s Numbering Discussion Paper

16. Have you attempted to establish an interconnect or terminating agreement for LICS? Have
you encountered any specific barriers?

As a coalition, VON cannot answer this question.

***
We thank you in advance for taking consideration of these views. Feel free to contact Caroline De
Cock, Executive Director VON Europe, by phone (+ 32 (0)474 840515) or email (cdc@voneurope.eu)
should you need further information.
*
* *
ABOUT the VON Coalition Europe
The Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition Europe was launched in December 2007 by seven leading Internet
communications and technology companies, on the cutting edge – iBasis, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Rebtel,
Skype and Voxbone – to create an authoritative voice for the Internet-enabled communications industry.

The VON Coalition Europe notably focuses on educating and informing policymakers in the European Union in
order to promote responsible government policies that enable innovation and the many benefits that Internet
voice innovations can deliver.