What is Private Infrastructure ENUM?

Private ENUM uses the concepts of creating a domain name from a telephone number (TN) and resolving it to a URI. It does not, however, use the domain e164.arpa (or any other domain with regulatory oversight). Private ENUM is used when there is a closed user group that wants to use ENUM to exchange IP traffic.
An example of such a user group is a group of communications carriers that wants to exchange VoIP traffic. The user group that creates and uses the domain will also create the policies for the domain. There will be no regulatory oversight of this domain, because it is not intended for public use.

What is Public Infrastructure ENUM?

National number administrators typically assign TNs to communications carriers, not to end users; carriers then assign the TNs to end users. Carriers have specific needs when it comes to provisioning routing information related to their customers’ TNs. Carriers map TNs to internal network addresses to enable call routing and features; these addresses are not publicly available. The carrier’s network and its associated addresses are highly secure, and access is strictly maintained and limited to other service providers. These characteristics have come to define the recent discussions of carrier ENUM.

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