VA Accreditation Process

Introduction

In order to become a Validation Agency (VA), organisations must be accredited. UKEC will manage the accreditation process based on a series of accreditation requirements.
It is anticipated that accreditation will take place at first application and last until the VA Contract is terminated. In addition, the VA may be asked to provide details of compliance in the event that UKEC receives a complaint about its actions during the term of the contract.

To begin the process of accreditation, please contact the UKEC Secretariat via email secretariat@ukec.co.uk or telephone 020-3129-7212.

Vas will typically work in one of two modes. They may contract directly with registrants, or they may subcontract to (or indeed, be a part of) a registry operation. The underlying principles of the accreditation process are that:

• The registrant should be aware there is a validation stage in making their ENUM registration and
• that the validation should be conducted in a thorough and auditable manner.

Validation Agencies form a very important part of the ENUM process, because if validation is done incorrectly then a registrant may cause an end-users telephone calls to be miss-routed.

The Accreditation process

During the application process to become a VA the applicant will be asked to provide evidence of how each requirement is met. This may be in the form of a URL to the page where this information is currently displayed or, through internal documentation containing, full details of how these requirements will be met.

If the applicant does not meet the accreditation requirements then its application will not proceed. In addition if the applicant or VA subsequently fails to meet some or all of the requirements, accreditation may be revoked. This will ultimately have the affect of terminating a VAs ‘accredited’ status which will mean that ENUM registrations can no longer be made.

The Accreditation Requirements

1) The VA Contract and Relationship with UKEC

• The applicant VA must abide by the VA Contract and Code of Practice at all times;
• The applicant VA must make UKEC aware of its methodology in detail (e.g. a documented process description);
• Any changes to the methodology must be communicated to UKEC prior to implementation;
• The accredited VA is required to publish a code of practice outlining a complaint handling and dispute resolution process in the event a complaint is made and this must be made available to UKEC at application stage;
• The applicant (and once accredited) VA must provide details of any relevant litigation or regulatory enforcements e.g. details of any OFCOM fines, any outstanding court judgments or details of any ongoing legal actions during the accreditation application process and during the term of the accreditation;
• The applicant VA must supply a copy of their Data Protection Act registration certificate and in addition must not do anything which could put UKEC in breach of laws on data protection (in particular the Data Protection Act 1998) and the protection of personal information, or allow the registry to be put in this position because of the VA’s inaction;
• The applicant understands that it is not the sole VA within the UK ENUM industry and must ensure this message is clear and transparent to the public.

2) The VA Relationship with the Tier 1 Registry

• The applicant must demonstrate that it understands and is able to carry out the requirements of validation communication with the Tier 1 Registry (including but not limited to the format and transmission of the Validation Token)
• The accredited VA must be contactable by the Tier 1 Registry within usual business hours and be able to act quickly on receiving a requests.

3) The VA Relationship with the Registrant

VAs may contract directly with a registrant, or as part of, or subcontracted to, a Registrar.

3a) For a direct contract:

It is of utmost important that a registrant is well informed: that they understand the requirement for the Validation process, the relationship of the VA with the remainder of the the UK ENUM registration process, the specific role the VA plays in the whole UK ENUM industry, service levels the Registrant can expect and all relevant charges.

3b) For an indirect contract:

You may choose to subcontract the VA operation, or provide it yourselves as part of a combined registrar and validation service. If as the registrar, you own the blocks of numbers concerned, this will be especially true. In this scenario fees, service descriptions and support channels may be combined for single service delivery.

In all circumstances, the VA should:

• Give details of the relevant services provided; information on how to invoke the service; any charges payable; and how long it will take to carry out the service.
• Make customers aware of changes to these charges with ample notice.
• Detail the method(s), availability and cost of customer service provided.
• Act quickly upon receiving a request from the aspiring or existing Registrant to take some action for them.
• Provide prompt and reliable customer support.

Validation Agency Documents (December 2008)

The following documents are available to assist validation agencies:

• Getting Started as a Validation Agency Talk
• Validation Agency UKEC Complaints Committee Terms of Reference (Word Doc)
• Validation Agency Code of Practice (Word Doc)
• Validation Agency Contract (Deed Poll) (Word Doc)

Consult

Consultations with UKEC

This page contains an archive of public consultations held by UKEC.

There are currently no open consultations.

Validation Agency Proposals Review (Oct 2008)

The Validation Agency is responsible for determining whether a user of UK ENUM is permitted to have a record created for their phone number. There are two documents:

• Validation Agency Contract
• Validation Agency Policy

We would welcome your feedback on the documents using our online survey.

Registrar Contract and Lifecycle Review (July 2008)

Three documents come together to detail how a registrar can apply to and work with Nominet, in order to provide ENUM registration services. These are:

• Lifecycle of an ENUM Registrar
• Nominet and Registrar Contract
• Accreditation Process for Registrars

Lifecycle of an ENUM Registration

The lifecycle document explains how an ENUM registration works, is registered, renewed and cancelled.

• Lifecycle Of an ENUM Registration

ENUM EPP Mapping

The ENUM EPP Mapping is the technical specification that describes how registrars will interact with Nominet (the Registry), to perform registrations, modifications and other database updates.

• ENUM EPP Mapping

What?

What is ENUM?

ENUM is an internationally approved method for connecting the telephone communications network to the Internet. ENUM is designed to enable you to call someone on different electronic communications devices and software applications by using a single identifier - a telephone number converted into a domain name.

Initial benefits of ENUM

The first main use of ENUM will be to link different VoIP servers so that telephones within businesses that use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to connect users within an internal network can use the same technology to connect users to external customers via the Internet.

At present it is easy to connect from one employee within a company to another in the same company using a VoIP server. That still works if an employee is a home worker who connects over the Internet - the VoIP server recognises the numbers within its system and connects the call as if the home worker were in the office.

However, if someone within Company A wishes to connect to someone in Company B using their VoIP server currently, they need to connect to a telephone network provider who makes the connection to the other company. Obviously this costs money, as the calls are charged for by the telephone company.

The advantage of ENUM is that it will enable Company A’s VoIP server to connect with Company B’s VoIP server via the Internet without having to connect to the telephone network for the call.

This is done by translating the telephone number into a domain name:-

01865 332211 becomes 1.1.2.2.3.3.5.6.8.1.4.4.e164.arpa where ‘44′ is the UK’s international dialling code, ‘e164′ is the name of the telephone numbering system and ‘.arpa’ is the Internet infrastructure equivalent of .uk or .com. A computer can understand and connect to this address in a fraction of a second which makes ENUM a quick, stable and cheap link between the telecommunications system and the Internet.

Future benefits of ENUM

As the technology develops, local control of the information associated with your ENUM domain name will enable calls to be connected to your desk telephone or mobile ‘on the fly’ as you move in and out of the office environment.

For example, you could save all your contact details: fax and phone numbers (work, mobile and home), e-mail and home addresses, voicemail etc. all in one ENUM entry. This address is used to store Name Authority Pointer Records (Naptr), that contain whatever contact details you wish to include, such as mobile telephone number, landline telephone number, fax, web site address and email address. You can then add rules to redirect people to one or other of these contact details depending on who the person is, what time it is and so on. For example calls after 5.30pm could be routed to your mobile, whilst all contacts during office hours could be via e-mail.

Industry and Government working together

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) are overseeing the ENUM project in the UK in consultation with industry experts, service providers, future subscribers, users and those with a general interest in electronic communications.

The DTI’s involvement is primarily to ensure the proper handling of ‘rights of use’ of telephone numbers and domain names. Currently the telephone and Internet address systems - the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and Internet Protocol (IP) networks - are operated in very different ways.

Telephone numbers are allocated by governments in accordance with strict International Telecommunications Union (ITU) recommendations and the Domain Name System via a series of bodies such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). When these systems are joined there is the potential for considerable confusion, hence the government’s involvement.

Self-regulation

However, the DTI does not want to impose regulation from above, but rather establish some form of management arrangements for the UK part of the proposed ENUM system. Their preferred solution would be a system of self-regulation to ‘avoid the need for legislation and to let the system develop on a commercial basis that allows for open and fair competition whilst protecting the public interest.’

This approach is consistent with current Government policy not to regulate the allocation and use of the Internet identifiers on which ENUM relies. It also accords with the trend in Europe and the UK towards greater liberalisation and self-regulation for electronic communications.

ENUM trials are being conducted in a growing number of countries and whilst it does have many benefits, such as improved Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or using the Internet to make telephone calls, it also raises a number of issues.

The fact that it is being implemented on a country-by-country basis means that many of the decisions that are being taken will be applied from a national rather than an international perspective leaving many areas of policy open to interpretation.

Privacy

There are also a number of potentially far-reaching data protection and privacy implications, which have been cause for concern in some countries, and which the DTI openly acknowledges will need to be addressed.

For instance, a telephone number and therefore an ENUM is a globally unique identification number. Because of the convenience of using a single number to contact another person, ENUM is also of huge potential interest to marketers and spammers and would be a prime target for the data mining of personal contact information, especially given that all numbers would be held in one international public database.

For this reason the ENUM Security and Privacy Task Group was set up to established a framework of Fair Information Practices (FIPs) but these have yet to be tried and tested on a large scale.

Next steps

So where next for ENUM? Nominet has been awarded the contract to run the UK Tier 1 registry to look after and run the ENUM database.

We hope to launch UK ENUM in Summer 2008.

This page was originally written by Nominet: http://www.nominet.org.uk/tech/enum/

Documents

The following documents are available:

Validation Agency Documents (December 2008)

• Getting Started as a Validation Agency Talk
• Validation Agency UKEC Complaints Committee Terms of Reference (Word Doc)
• Validation Agency Code of Practice (Word Doc)
• Validation Agency Contract (Deed Poll) (Word Doc)

UKEC Company documents

• Company Memorandum
• Company Articles
• Current Proposed arrangements for Governance Structure - post AGM

Workshop (17th January 2007)

• Attendee List
• Presentation - History
• Presentation - RFP
• Presentation - Timeline
• Presentation - CRUE
• Questions and Answers

UK ENUM information

• UK Enum Trial Group Report
• CRUE proposal document

Tier 1 Registry RFP and Supporting documents

• Invitation to Tender

Draft Codes of Practice

• Tier 1 registry
• Registrars
• Authentication Agencies

Board

The UK Enum Consortium is a not for profit company. The board consists of a number (currently 4) of members elected annually by the membership and a representative from the UK Tier 1 Registrar (Nominet).

The current board, elected at the AGM on 25/3/2008 are:

Denesh Bhabuta

Denesh is involved in various IT and non-IT related companies, and provide consultancy to various types of businesses. His Internet experience began in 1989 on a personal level, moving on to working within the Internet Industry from 1994.

Some of the companies he has worked for in the past include Lancaster University (post funded by UKERNA), Demon Internet (London), Thus plc (London), Level3 (London), Firstmark Communications (based in Hanover, Paris, Madrid and Luxembourg), Lambdanet (Hanover), FLAG Telecommunications (London) and Tunisia Telecom (Tunis).

Denesh was a member elected Director of LONAP Limited from April 2004 until May 2006, where he held the posts of Finance Director, Events Manager and “Walking, Talking Billboard for LONAP” all at the same time. LONAP is an extremely successful and stable not-for profit Neutral Internet Exchange based in London.

In addition, between April 1999 and April 2006 he held the member elected post of Policy Advisory Board Member at Nominet. Nominet are the .uk domain registry.

He has also held the member-elected post of co-Chair of RIPEs Local Internet Registry Working Group (which discussed and implemented policies on IP Addressing within Europe)

James Blessing

James Blessing is Chief Operations Officer for Entanet International, part of the $200M IT distribution and communications services group Entagroup. An innovative and creative IT professional, he has over ten years’ experience of deploying Internet technologies and takes an active role in the Internet industry. He has been a council member of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) since 2004 and is Chair of the ISPA broadband sub-group.

Prior to joining Entanet in 2005, James commanded the roles of Technical Support Manager and Technical Development Manager at Zen Internet where he was responsible for growing a large support team, product development and financial reporting. Previously he held senior project management and technical directorship roles in the design and build of consumer facing websites for high street brands and outsourced IT support to media companies. This followed an early career in radio in which he was involved in outside broadcasting, technical operation and programme production.

Peter Gradwell

Peter Gradwell is one of the UK’s leading young internet and telecoms entrepreneurs and was recognised in the Daily Telegraph (February 2007) as one of the changing faces of IT.

Peter Gradwell has sponsored the creation of www.voip.org.uk. It is a community-led VoIP forum aiming to become the UK’s main reference point for internet telephony.

He is a founding member of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA), the UK trade body that, among other activities, lobbies OFCOM.

He is the Managing Director of Gradwell dot com Limited, one of the UK’s leading VoIP Providers for UK SMEs.

Steve Kennedy

Steve has over 20 years’ experience in the Telecoms/Internet/Mobile industries. He was involved with internet in the UK before it had a commercial presence, internet streaming from its beginning (he was the first UK Real Networks customer), and set-up the first Internet Dance Radio Station (Gaialive.com). Steve was also involved with the first netcast of BigBrother (UK).

He is an acknowledged “independent Industry expert” and uses those abilities in consulting and working with a number of investment partners on various projects. Steve also is a freelance journalist writing on technology subjects.

The representative from the UK Tier 1 Registrar (Nominet) is:

Jay Daley

Jay Daley is Director of IT for Nominet UK, and represents the Tier 1 Registry Operator on the UKEC Board.

Jay Daley is well versed in the development of IT strategy and services for enterprises, having over 20 years experience of working in both commercial and public sector environments.

Jay is one of the modern breed of IT directors who contribute to business strategy at board level, whilst maintaining an in-depth understanding of the technologies and business processes they support.

After joining Nominet UK, the national Registry for all .uk domain names, in 2002, Jay transformed Nominet’s public Internet infrastructure, on which all .uk domains rely. Working closely with the operations departments Jay is leading the move to a fully online service and automated business processes. More recently Jay was responsible for the successful bid to be the registry for UK User ENUM.

Jay joined Nominet UK from Brighton and Hove Council, where as Assistant Director, ICT & e-Government, he introduced in 1997/98 one of the first city-wide Internet service provisions for local schools. He later extended this to one of the first city-wide fibre networks serving multiple public sector bodies.

Qualified in ITIL, the modern standard for IT Service Management, Jay is also a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner.

Welcome

This is the website of the UK Enum Consortium,a limited company set up with the recognition of the UK Government, via BERR to administer the UK Enum top level domain 4.4.e164.arpa.

What is ENUM?

ENUM is an internationally approved method for connecting the telephone communications network to the Internet. ENUM is designed to enable you to call someone on different electronic communications devices and software applications by using a single identifier - a telephone number converted into a domain name. Find out more…

How can I get an ENUM?

Nominet has been contracted to operate the registry infrastructure for UK ENUM, and we hope to go live with a service in Summer 2008.

Membership of UKEC

UKEC is now offering membership to parties interested in the operation of the UK Enum space. UKEC’s main purpose is to supervise the operation of the top level registrar. UKEC is coming to the end of its formative phase: UKEC is coming to the end of its formative phase and held its AGM in March 2008, which elected the initial board.

Consult!

Before the  UK ENUM registry operation goes live, we need your feedback on a number of matters. Please read and respond to our online consultations - we really appreciate your input.

Contact:

To contact any member of the UKEC board, please email secretariat@ukec.co.uk or call  020-3129-7212.