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Networks & Infrastructure
Local Number Portability hits its stride
Despite regional differences and hiccups, competition drives growth
by Sean Buckley
In the good old regulated telecom service provider world, a subscriber’s phone number was pretty much like their social security number: it was tied to their identity and unless that subscriber moved to another location it never changed.
But with the rise of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) in the U.S. and a bevy of new international competitors, the user had new options of where it could get its phone, data and later wireless service.
Of course, the question was if a business or an individual subscriber switched over to a new competitor, could they keep their number? Enter Number Portability (NP).
In essence there are three elements of Number Portability:
• Service provider portability: allows the end user to retain their telephone number when changing service providers.
• Location portability: allows end users to retain their telephone numbers when moving from one location to another. A telephone number could, for instance, be associated with a mobile device despite the location.
• Service portability: In this instance, the service provider allows the subscriber to retain the same telephone number as they change from one service to another. If a subscriber, for example, switches their subscription to a VoIP provider, the service can be offered either by a new operator or can reside within the current operator’s network.
Regardless of the sucess service providers have had in rolling out NP initiatives, there have been instances where issues have arisen for both individual subscribers and even business customers.
For example, Telecommunications' webinar partner Vertical Systems Group (VSG) candidly revealed earlier this year when it moved a few miles to another location in Norwood, Mass., the process of porting its number from a local CLEC to a competitive VoIP provider was fraught with problems.
The process of porting its number — one that VSG had since 1986 when the company was founded — from Waltham, Mass.-based CLEC ONE Communications to a broadband VoIP provider took 10 weeks.
Part of the problem, explained Erin Dunne, Research Director for Vertical Systems Group who was dealing with the process, were various missteps taken by ONE Communications. While going through the portability process, VSG had to continue to pay for the old voice service it was no longer using.
“The process from what I gather is relatively manual: you fill out a form and if all the Ts and Is aren’t dotted, it’s going to bounce,” she explained. “It’s such a manual process, and no one on either end seems to know the nuances of the process and companies and individuals get caught in the middle.”
Regional adoption continues
Despite the end-user business challenges that will likely crop up, service providers globally are continually moving forward with NP initiatives.
Given the nature of how each country’s regulatory environment has evolved to enhanced and promote wireless and wireline operator competition, LNP has emerged since the mid-1990s in varying stages.
Leading the initial charge for fixed line NP were countries such as the UK, the U.S. and Canada, while initial rollouts of mobile NP were lead by European (Holland and the UK) and Asia-Pacific.
Following in the footsteps of the early adopters, there has been increased movement throughout 2008 in the Middle East (Israel), Africa (South Africa), Europe (Bulgaria, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Romania) and South America (Brazil and Mexico).
Driven by current EU mandates and a growing base of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), Eastern Europe, in recent years has been an active adopter of Number Portability this year. (see Figure 1.)
Rick Allison, Sr. Manager, Technical Product Marketing for Tekelec, says that the industry seems to be in the third wave of NP adoption. “For us, we get into one country, get into one set of operators and get them situated with the feature sets to resolve the Number Portability problem, and as soon as we’re wrapped up with that there’s another country or region coming on line,” he said. “We’re kind of seeing a continuation of that pattern.”
Depending on the region and the regulatory environments, wireless and wireline NP have their own set of technical approaches.
Driven by the initial regulations for NP, North American-based wireline carriers have standardized on a query/response database technology.
On the international front, wireline operators are using the Intelligent Network Application Protocol (INAP) database/query response (North American method) to set triggers in the database. Meanwhile, international wireless operators are using triggerless intercept method where messages are pulled out of the network for mobility management. (see Figure 2.)
Technological differences aside, the telecom regulators in most international countries tend set their wireline and wireless NP initiatives in stages.
In the U.S., it was wireline first and then wireless,” said Allison. “I think the intervals are probably shorter (internationally) than they are in the U.S. when wireless has to go and wireline has to go. It’s actually reversed in that most countries typically roll out wireless NP requirements first and then wireline NP.”
IP is on the move
While Eastern Europe and South American may be new to the LNP game with mainly TDM-based capabilities, early adopters such as the U.S. and Western Europe are moving towards IP-based applications.
In essence, service providers are on three primary modes of NP deployments. The first two are telephony NP and as a next-gen NP database. Since NP started to take off in the mid-1990s, service providers are now starting to use their NP databases as a subscriber database.
Riding what Tekelec’s Allison calls the third wave of number portability, these operators are slowly integrating both SIP and ENUM capabilities into their NP offerings.
“In some of the countries where they were early adopters, particularly in the U.S. and some of the Western European countries, we’re starting to see in SIP access to the number portability data and Electronic Numbering (ENUM),” he said. “I would anticipate it’s going to be a similar process where perhaps the countries that were the early-on adopters for first generation portability will be the first adopters for the SIP and ENUM solutions and it will trickle down from there.” (see Cable-Tec Expo 2008: Cable tunes to ENUM).
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