OVERVIEW

The problem of multiple identifiers is a known problem in all networks today, be they media, telecom or enterprise, with no comprehensive solution in place. In the convergent telecom networks this is manifest by the proliferation of Ids: telephone numbers, email IDs , IM etc. Even in today's networks we store in our address books multiple numbers for the same identity - home, work, fax, cell etc. This also brings to light concerns regarding privacy of subscribers data, since each of these elements is an attribute of the subscribers profile, ironically on which they have no control! This negates the whole notion of privacy that is classically understood as the ability to exclusive use and access to our account and the data stored in and directed to it. This desire to exercise a strict control over the privacy data is exemplified in many telecom application scenarios like subscribers not wanting to receive unidentified calls, subscribers wanting to control access to their contact information, the desire to automatically synch changes in their profile with select network identities and controlling who gets to view and track their locations.

However the situation today is that there is no unified addressing system, no privacy (the subscribers MSISDN is freely passed around) and very little control with the subscriber in the way in which contact data (and more) is used or abused. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to address any individual by a persistent identifier that would be the gateway to call the individual in the present context? And imagine the possibilities that this would open up in a converged network where the proliferation of identifiers would be even larger: telephone numbers, email IDs , IM Ids etc. Jamie Lewis, CEO of the Burton Group, summarized this problem succinctly:

Today, we use a wide variety of different mechanisms for identification, including e-mail addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, and object identifiers. But most of these are specific to one means of interaction. None of them is persistent across the many different ways that people, applications, and devices can communicate, and so they don't function well as identifiers in the long run.

XRI telephony enables mobile subscribers to be able to be uniquely addressed without ever giving out attribute information them. So the XRI based contact entries for Bill in the address book simply look like =bill, =bill/(+Home), =bill/(+Work), =bill/(+Cell), =bill/(+email) etc. This XRI based system also form the basis for access and privacy control. XRIs provide an identification and naming layer for applications requiring persistent, trusted endpoints for secure messaging and privacy-protected data sharing and synchronization.

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KEY FEATURES

• A single permanent Identifier useable for all current and future communication modes
• Allows discovery of other identifiers of the same subscriber through the unique permanent Identifier
• Provides a privacy layer between the publicly known permanent Identifier and other identifiers that the subscriber wants to share on a per relationship basis
• Access & privileges control together with State aware telephony or additionally
• Enables a phone to be the convergent device for all communication medium
• Provides identifier synchronization using the network address book

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HIGHLIGHTS

• Persistent Identifier enables subscribers to change attributes (phone numbers, IM Ids etc.) without ever having to notify others
• Identity based access, security and privacy controls available to subscriber
• Increased customer retention by the carrier providing resolution and provisioning services
• Channel independence of XRI based Identifier is valid regardless of the mode of contact
• Drives revenue across the relationship pairs (calls) and community (groups) in the expanded universe of many network operators across multiple telephony channels with number of subscribers each

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