Email Portability Approved by Knesset Committee

Mon Feb 22 16:44:10 UTC 2010

There are huge differences in LNP/WLNP vs. Email Address portability.

Prior to LNP/WLNP, there was already SS7 which is, essentially a centralized
layer of indirection for phone numbers. This was necessary in order to support
multiple LECs serving the same NPA-NXX anyway.  Once that was in place,
LNP/WLNP was almost a no-brainer from a call routing perspective. The
issue was with the administrative process and the level of ethics exhibited
by some of the phone-company participants (slamming, etc.).  We saw the
same thing in DNS.  LNP is much more like domain name portability
than email address portability.  We already have domain name portability
and had it long before LNP/WLNP.

The owner of a domain has always been able to change the NS records
pointing to the authoritative DNS servers for said domain.

If users care about email portability, they should simply get their own
domain and move the domain around as they see fit.  Given google
and other email hosting providers which will trivially host your email
domain and the low annual cost of registering a domain, I'm not sure
why legislators would think doing it differently is a good idea.  If I were
an Israeli ISP and this law were to pass, I'd simply discontinue providing
email service for my customers and suggest they get their email via
Google, Yahoo, or other free email service.

Owen

On Feb 22, 2010, at 8:26 AM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:

> I am sure the various carriers faced with the onset of Local Number
> Portability and WLNP in this part of the world would have been happy to
> escape with only forwarding phone calls for 3 months.
> 
> Alas, such was not their fate :)
> 
> I would watch out for this idea, it might actually catch on in various
> places, warts and all...
> 
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Robert Brockway
> <robert at timetraveller.org>wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 22 Feb 2010, James Jones wrote:
>> 
>> Why does this seem like a really bad idea?
>>> 
>> 
>> While I think the principal is noble there are operational problems:
>> 
>> 1) Large and increasing quantity of email will be forwarded between Israeli
>> ISPs, loading their networks with traffic that could have been avoided.
>> 
>> 2) Every time someone changes ISP and wants to continue using this address
>> they will need to notify their original ISP, who they may not have had a
>> business relationship with for many years.  This will be a significant
>> operational challenge I expect.  How do you confirm the person notifying you
>> is the real owner of the address, for example?
>> 
>> IMHO it would have been better to require the ISPs to forward the email for
>> a reasonable period of time (say 3 months) to allow the user to make
>> relevant notifications (or just stop using an ISP bound email address).
>> 
>> Unfortunately the links cited are in Hebrew so I'm only going on Gadi's
>> report here.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Rob
>> 
>> --
>> Email: robert at timetraveller.org
>> IRC: Solver
>> Web: http://www.practicalsysadmin.com
>> I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy
>> 
>> 