On Feb 23, 2010, at 1:06 AM, gordon b slater wrote:
On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 21:20 -0800, Dave CROCKER wrote:
In general, a core problem with the Knesset law is that it presumes something that is viable for the phone infrastructure is equally - or at least tolerably - viable in the email infrastructure. Unfortunately, the details of the two are massively different in terms of architecture, service model, cost structures and operational skills.
Good point Dave; for the mobile phone industry, number portability is an endpoint thing - no harder to change than a field in a billing/accounting database (the SIM#, keeping it very simple here), for email its a WHOLE lot more.
And who runs this database? Local number portability requires a new database, one that didn't exist before, It's run by a neutral party and maps any phone number to a carrier and endpoint identifier. (In the US, that database is currently run by Neustar -- see http://www.neustar.biz/solutions/solutions-for/number-administration) Figuring out how such a solution would work with email is left as an exercise for the reader. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb