Quite, I don't see the relevance of the analogy. If there was actual demand for
a market in telephone numbers the technology could be established to make this
possible. Today the demand is only there in the business space where numbers
are very definitely traded.
Sanctions have to be credible. Telling people that they are required to give
away an asset that has become a scarce resource is not credible. Telling people
'oh dear no more IPv4 addresses left' is not credible. The authority of the
registries only lasts as long as they have product left in inventory to sell.
We cannot afford to indulge in faith based planning here.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Morris [mailto:dwm(_at_)xpasc(_dot_)com]
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 8:04 PM
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: selling IPv4 addresses vs. the POTS number model
I believe every POTS phone number is separately portable, at
least within the geographic area ... you can switch your POTS
number between providers and to cellular or VoIP providers.
Business numbers are transferable (and have been for longer
than general portability) ... in the case I was associated
with, my principals chose not to take over the failing
business' numbers only because to do so would have meant
paying significant delinquint bills.
Not that I believe there is a large market for the sale of
POTS numbers, just that at some level, exchange is possible.
You can also purchase a virtual phone number having the phone
company place a permenant forward in the switch to some other
location. Then you pay call charges based on the distance
between the virtual number's switch and the forwarded to number.
On 3 Aug 2007, John Levine wrote:
I don't see whay you can't sell your phone number.
You can sell your 800/888/877/866 number, but not your POTS number.
Toll free numbers are more like domain names, in that you
have to find
a provider to host it and to put an entry into the DNS-like
database
that phone switches consult to decide how to route the
call. Ordinary
phone numbers are more like IP addresses in that the first
part of the
number is used to route calls (give or take some
portability details
that don't really affect this argument.) Your phone
company owns your
phone number.
If you have a good number (lucky digits, etc.) I bet you
could sell
it off.
If it's a toll free number, sure, there's a robust market.
If it's a
POTS number, forget it.
This isn't exactly analogous to IP addresses, but the routing
nightmares that would result if every phone number were separately
portable is similar to what would happen if people started taking
their /28's with them.
I expect you'll find that each local phone as a switch based
physical address. There has to be a DNS-like lookup or
ICMP-like redirect which maps POTS numbers to physical phones.
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