[gerdesj]

ENUM anyone? https://www.nominet.uk/search/enum - ha! (There used to be a page on the Nominet site about ENUM but now the ITU doc: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/inr/enum/Documents/ENUM/ENUM%20... can't even spell Nominet correctly)

I should explain: In simple terms, ENUM allows you to turn a phone number into a SRV record that points at a PBX via a DNS lookup. The ITU allocates the zones to registrars, the zones neatly map to country codes - its a great idea.

However, as you can imagine this is not very popular with big telecoms who are used to charging by the second/minute and location by distance which is obviously bollocks when you turn a circuit switched network into a packet switched one that no longer routes calls via satellites to cross the Atlantic (eg). OK pricing and tech for "POTS" has come a long way since I were a lad but it is still a nice little earner over letting us lot do our own thing.

You can also imagine that Google, Facebook int al would also suffer a collective coronary should us lot be able to do our own comms without them.

I'm fairly sure that you (for a given value of you) can't remember the last time you used a "landline" but if ENUM was available it might have been a few minutes ago and not logged externally and charged as though it was 1970 sigh