Managing, Ordering, Distributing, Exposing, and Registering Telephone Numbers (MODERN): Problem Statement, Use Cases, and Framework

The functions of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) are rapidly migrating to the Internet. This is generating new requirements for many traditional elements of the PSTN, including Telephone Numbers (TNs). TNs no longer serve simply as telephone routing addresses: they are now identifiers that may be used by Internet-based services for a variety of purposes including session establishment, identity verification, and service enablement. This problem statement examines how the existing tools for allocating and managing telephone numbers do not align with the use cases of the Internet environment and proposes a framework for Internet-based services relying on TNs.