Prague, 8 April 2009 – Initiated by five European countries, ENUM Federation, an interest group of legal entities, was established in the Czech Republic on 30 March. Representatives of the largest ENUM registries of the old continent: Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic, established an organization in Prague whose major objective will be to jointly promote and support the development of the ENUM system which provides a framework for calling ordinary telephone numbers over the Internet without being charged per minute. The newly established association has its seat in Prague; Pavel Tůma, who was in charge of introducing the ENUM project in the Czech Republic, was elected the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
“Our common vision is a world in which people can and will routinely call over the Internet. Since ENUM is a technology which may not interest a common user, we in ENUM Federation want to join our forces at the international level and deal with the promotion of products and services which support ENUM.” says Pavel Tůma, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the newly established association. “The first and foremost challenge of the ENUM Federation is to establish a trademark which will clearly identify and draw attention to the products and services which support ENUM. Then, their users can be sure that, thanks to them, they can call each other over the Internet for free."
Representatives of the ENUM Federation expect that other countries will join the association in the future. The countries in which ENUM is in use may be among the first ones.

What ENUM offers

ENUM allows for the use of advantages of Internet calling even when making regular calls. That is: if the called number is available using IP telephony, the call will be transmitted over the Internet, instead of a landline or mobile telephone network. Contrary to these networks, transmission of calls over the Internet is free-of-charge (or only for the price of the Internet connection). Information on how ENUM technology works and on the options if offers to individual users, companies as well as operators is available at http://enum.nic.cz.

ENUM in the Czech Republic

CZ.NIC Association launched the commercial operation of the ENUM system domain registry on 22 January 2007. ENUM domains are registered by 21 registrars and ENUM is supported by the networks of IPEX, CL-NET and NETWAY telecommunication operators. In Europe, ENUM is currently also used in e.g. Austria, Germany, Poland, Finland, Romania, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland. The founders of ENUM Federation are representatives of ENUM registries from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the Czech Republic.