The increasing use of mobiles, the impact of VoIP and the very wide utilisation of capped plans and bundling marketing practices are posing important questions for the way traditional telephone numbers are managed, according to the first of a series of issues papers released today by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The paper assesses the structure of Australia's telephone numbering plan and the more than 40 types of services that it specifies in terms of:

• Efficiency;
• Flexibility;
• Resilience;
• Simplicity and transparency.

The assessment is based on the following questions that the ACMA is asking about numbering:

• How can the Numbering Plan provide a bridge between the current communications environment, and the emerging and future communications environments which may be predominantly reliant on internet-based services and next generation networks?
• To what extent should numbers be used to achieve policy objectives or support the call routing, charging and other functions of carriage service providers?
• Recognising the increasing role that IP addresses and internet domain names will play in the supply and use of communications services and that neither follows a service-based structure, to what extent should distinctions between services in the Numbering Plan be removed or reduced to a minimum, for example, by merging some or all of today's service types into a 'general purpose' category?