Travelocity.com is the
leading on-line travel site and as such an active member of the Internet community.
NetNumber has developed and released the "Global Internet-Telephony Directory"
(GITD) over the past year. In addition, the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF)
launched a working group called ENUM to define a technical standard for
mapping
telephone numbers to Internet addresses. NetNumber's GITD is an
ENUM compliant
directory service that translates telephone numbers into
Internet address information
in support of all types of IP-Communications
services. (i.e.: Telephone
Number to: SIP address, SMTP address, SMS
address, VPIM address, etc.)
It has
come to our attention on October 2nd, NetNumber filed an application with the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) to define the GITD as a new Internet
Top-Level Domain (TLD), called ".tel". The NetNumber ".tel" application was
made in conjunction with Pulver.com (www.pulver.com) and with the
Internet-Telephony
Addressing Board (www.i-tab.org).
The underlying need for GITD services can be
summarized as follows:
ˇ There are over 1.2 billion legacy telephone numbers
in the world today and
the number is growing.
ˇ An enormous global investment
has been made in training end-users all over
the world to use standard legacy
telephone numbers to place calls, send
faxes, leave voicemail messages, etc.
ˇ
ˇUnfortunately, IP networks like the Internet, corporate intranets, and
managed
extranets don't work off of telephone number addressing. Instead, IP
networks
work off of IP addressing, SMTP addressing, URL's and other
non-telephone number
formats.
ˇ
The GITD will provide a smooth migration
of legacy telephone numbers over
to the new world of Internet protocol networks.
The smooth transition
enabled by the ".tel" TLD is the ability to link telephone
numbers to
Internet addresses for IP-enabled communications devices so that end-users
can
continue to use telephone numbers as a common addressing mechanism for
both PSTN
and Internet services.
As Travelocity's CEO, I believe.that the approval the NetNumber.com
and Pulver.com application, the Peek/Pulver/Marschel application, for the .tel TLD
would help bring competition by insuring market access by subscribers to the registration
of telephone numbers for IP telephony. Market competition and open public
review are critically important.
I am therefore recommending that you approve
this application.
Cordially,
Terrell B. Jones
President and CEO
Travelocity.com