Ed Shryane’s proposal to make LIR phone numbers optional

Summary

Ed Shryane proposed making the phone attribute optional for LIR organisation records, while RIPE NCC would still keep a contact phone and members would still need to be reachable.
The proposal separates two jobs now bundled together: contacting a member and publishing its number in the registry. RIPE 93’s transcript records a proposal, not an adopted rule.

Analysis

One phone field has been asked to do two jobs. RIPE NCC needs a route to reach each Local Internet Registry (LIR); the public database also exposes a telephone number attached to the LIR’s organisation record. At RIPE 93, Ed Shryane argued that those requirements need not be the same.

Shryane, presenting the RIPE NCC Database team’s operational update, said the registry team’s internal procedure required a phone: attribute on every LIR organisation record. For end-user organisation records, he said, the field was optional. He proposed making it optional for LIRs too, so a member could choose whether to publish a number if it preferred another contact route.

That distinction matters most at the edges. A sole trader may not want a personal number in a public registry. A large organisation may have no single number that reliably reaches the right team. Those were Shryane’s examples, not measured cases of harm. They show why “the member has a phone” and “the public should see this phone” are different questions.

RIPE NCC’s own material shows how the field sits across policy and operations. The LIR setup guide says the general LIR telephone number is required and appears in the LIR List. The database object documentation describes phone: as conditional on an organisation object and contact: as optional. The business rules put RIPE NCC-managed LIR organisation attributes behind the LIR Portal; RIPE NCC Access lists Phone and Email under LIR Account Details. A field that looks like a line of text therefore sits between member administration and public disclosure.

Shryane also floated an optional contact field for another preferred route, naming WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal as examples. The transcript does not specify the eventual data format, verification method or whether those services would become supported contact types. That is the piece implementers would need before judging whether an alternative channel is dependable.

The policy boundary is the point. RIPE NCC can require members to remain reachable without requiring every member’s telephone number to be public. But that separation only works if the private operational route remains current and the published record clearly shows how outsiders can contact the organisation. Remove a public number and replace it with nothing, and the registry has solved one exposure problem by creating an accountability gap.

As of 31 October 2026, the public record reviewed here contains no approval or implementation date for Shryane’s proposal. A published decision or a changed LIR validation rule would change its status.