The fifth meeting of the Numbering, Names and Addressing group (WG NNA) of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) was held on 4-5 October in Paris.
WG NNA is a working group comprising mostly regulators from countries in the enlarged Europe, as well as other bodies such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the European Commission (EC). The group focuses on numbering issues, with a view to exchanging information, positions and decisions related to numbering, among others, particularly the management of these resources and the drafting of recommendations, reports and decisions, approved by the ECC, on issues of common interest for Europe.
The approval of ECC final report no. 70, titled ?Services Based on HESC ? Harmonised European Short Code? was one of the priority topics discussed at this meeting. It proposes the use of harmonised Europe-wide short codes ? 116 ? to provide non-commercial services of explicit public interest. The report was finalised after the public consultation period set by the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO) and must still be submitted for approval to the ECC plenary session. Also with regard to this same subject, parallel work is under way at Communications Committee (COCOM) and EC level.
The meeting also saw adoption of the final version of the Recommendation on Customer Protection in Case of Misuse of International E.164 resources, which puts forward a number of measures for the different countries? regulators to implement in order to protect consumers overly penalised by the undue use of (international) E.164 resources, particularly (dial-up) internet access. The envisaged measures specifically include blocking traffic to E.164 resources whose use is deemed inappropriate according to the pretexts set out in the said recommendation. After approval by the ECC plenary session the recommendation, to be available for consultation on the ERO website, will undergo public consultation for a period of two months.
Lastly, WG NNA decided to set up a project team - PT NGN (Next Generation Networks) - whose reference terms may be consulted on the ERO website.
