A project to make Internet telephony in the UK work a bit more like the world-wide web has begun, nearly five years after the idea was first mooted.

Last week, the UK’s domain name registry Nominet was awarded the contract to build and maintain ENum, a directory of Internet telephone numbers that will operate like the Internet domain name server (DNS), by a subsidiary of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

This will allow callers to look up businesses and individuals and find out their Internet telephone number, no matter which IP telephony provider they use.

At the moment, it is necessary to know which provider a company or person uses in order to find out their number. ENum will serve as an integrated repository of numbers.

The plan is for fixed-line telephone numbers to be added to the directory, eventually creating an ‘Internet of phones’.

For the mean time, the improved ease with which individuals can track each other down via online telephony may improve IP telephony adoption. ENum will “change the business model for communication providers quite seriously," Nominet’s technology director Jay Daley told the BBC.

Further reading

What is ENum?

Merger of net and phone numbers moves closer February 2003 

Unified comms revolution Unified communications technology: productive business boon or over-hyped white elephant?

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