This is 100 percent true, but don’t worry: they use the group as an email list

Image: Yahoo

Yahoo Groups is about to close, and its taking a lot of old web with it. All the content that was posted there will be removed by mid-December, and while it will be available for download until the end of the year, the site will be largely shut down by the end of this month.

Because Yahoo has not given the Internet many warnings, many strange externalities of the company’s solutions are being developed in public. One that is definitely surprising: the Kingdoms phone system actually relies in part on the Yahoo group founded in 2002 which I learned about through a tweet.

Today it was announced that Yahoo! Groups is closing, and taking with it part of a critical national infrastructure: the Oftel Yahoo Group, which is used to manage the UK phone number destination.

Yes, actually: See Ofcom website https://t.co/zuT1fPIzkapic.twitter.com/RsPyGlwfxs

lemon zest depression day (@erincandescent) October 16, 2019

The review may consider whether it is appropriate for the worlds sixth-largest economy to manage critical national infrastructure through the Yahoo group, but we hope this is obvious, says the 2015 report links in a tweet that was prepared by Simwood, UK telecommunications, and directed by Ofcom UKs the national telecommunications regulatory authority.

The United Kingdom’s telephone system actually relies on the Yahoo group, founded in 2002

Ofcom, otherwise known as the communications Authority, is America’s counterpart to the Federal communications Commission. One of his roles is to manage telephone numbers in the UK. The organization allocates numbers in 10,000 blocks to telecommunications companies, which then activate the numbers for use on their networks. Ofcom maintains an official database of these numbers on its website, which is available to communications companies.

Ofcom is not actually affiliated with the Yahoo page itself, according to the organization’s representative, who was not authorized to speak on the record. The group is an informal way to tell other telecoms who has which numbers, they said, which is important because it determines how calls are routed and charged. Basically, Ofcoms position is that the group is not needed because they maintain their own database, which is regularly updated with all the information that telecommunications companies may need.

But the Yahoo group may still be necessary for companies in the industry. Simon Woodhead, CEO of Simwood, who wrote the 2015 report, said the Yahoo group is useful in making telecommunications companies aware of how these ranges of numbers are distributed.

Apparently, theres not really a better way to let UK phone providers know which numbers belong to their competitors. They would say the group is informal for operators to talk to each other and there is a database for managing numbers. That is correct, but slightly evasive, Woodhead said. If you were to ask them what the formal process and means for operators to announce active number ranges to each other is, they wouldnt have an answer because the answer is the Oftel Yahoo group. (Its known as the Oftel Yahoo group because Oftel or the Office of Telecommunications was the organization that preceded Ofcom, and the Yahoo group precedes the creation of the UKs communications regulator.)

Woodhead compared the Yahoo group to DNS

Essentially, Ofcom manages the numbers that telecoms companies like Simwood can get; they build those blocks of numbers that they have on their network and then have to tell other telecoms companies that those numbers they’ve got are ready for service and where those numbers can be reached. This, Woodhead said, becomes necessary when you talk numbers because you need to know where the numbers are. Simwood hosts ranges of numbers for other operators, which is a problem because nowhere in the Ofcoms database is that relationship recorded.

Operators need to know where these numbers are placed so they can direct calls to them. That’s the goal of the Oftel group, says Woodhead. So we say Hey, this range from Fred Bloggs Limited is currently live on the Simwood network. These are the Interconnector points on the BT network. If you have two-way with us, then talk to us directly. And by the way, this is a test number.

The Yahoo group is also important because operators need to know how much to charge consumers for calls because its not obvious from the number range itself what the rate will be. The group facilitates this by allowing operators to tell each other to update their bid sheets.

Woodhead compared the Yahoo group to DNS, a domain name system that is an Internet system that links information like IP addresses to domain names. Like, www.theverge.com points to a given IP address, he said. What Ofcom list does, say theverge.com was registered. What it doesn’t do is say what the IP address is.

The Internet has its own protocols to make this happen. Voice communication, on the other hand, is not, which is where Yahoo group comes in. he says Hey: theverge.com currently active on our network and this is the IP address.

The idea that at least part of UKs’s voice infrastructure relies on the Yahoo Groups framework feels a bit unsettling; shouldn’t phone numbers be easier to manage than on the Internet? But then: the infrastructure that underpins the things we use and take for granted every day is usually much weirder and more complex than meets the eye.

Shouldn’t phone numbers be easier to manage than the Internet?

Yahoo plans to delete all of its downloaded group data, which includes files, photos, attachments, email updates, and message histories, among other things on December 14. This may not completely disrupt its use of UK telecoms, though, as email features should still work.

As far as I understand, the group will still function as a mailing list that is designed for all the practical purposes that people use it as, says Woodhead. But frankly, and here it mocks the worlds fifth-largest economy, or that we are now relying on Yahoo groups to manage critical national infrastructure is embarrassing.