250 million telephone numbers have been ported
Number Portability (NP) has already been implemented in over 50 countries. A table of Countries with Number Portability has been provided here for your convenience.
And over 2.3 billion numbers worldwide now have the potential to be ported. With India implementing Number Portability this year and China and Russia planning to launch by the end of 2012, these numbers are set to grow by 50%
But
Number Portability creates serious technical challenges for the industry
While Number Portability benefits subscribers, it presents Service Providers (SPs) with significant complexity and additional costs. Carriers and Hubs do not always have access to in-country Number Portability data, originators do not always know which carrier/hub to choose, and traffic and revenue may be lost where robust Number Portability Correction arrangements are not in place.
To mitigate this challenge, service providers acquire Number Portability data from a variety of sources, the combination of which requires significant management on an ongoing basis, requiring tailored interfaces, disparate technologies and diverse business arrangements that can be prohibitively expensive, potentially unreliable, and in some case subject additional regulation:
- HLR Lookup – commonly used by SMS Service Providers for Mobile Number Portability enquiries to obtain MCC/MNC, performance is variable, and availability
subject to regulation. - In-country data bases – can be expensive to subscribe to, integrate and maintain, especially if query volumes are high and involve multiple countries.
- Variety of 3rd party sources – Global coverage can be difficult to achieve through a single supplier, requiring potential complex management to
assure service availability
GSMA PathFinder Number Portability Discovery is a complete, global Number Portability service. It provides critical Number Plan and Number Portability (MCC/MNC) information enabling identification of the true destination network on a worldwide basis. Customers can query this high performance in real time as part of their routing decision process.
PathFinder Number Portability Discovery is a managed service. Data is continuously refreshed, scrubbed and stored by a dedicated team to provide a high quality, low latency source of number portability data. Customer, like SMS aggregators, who have typically used HLR Lookup services in the past, can now use Pathfinder with a single interface and obtain global number portability data. In addition, new sources of data are continuously added as required, or when new countries come on
line.
How it Works:
PathFinder is a one-stop shop for global number portability resolution, reaching 1.8 billion, 81% of the world’s portable numbers (fixed and mobile), the most comprehensive onboard data in the industry. Click here to request coverage details. PathFinder uploads NP data into geographically distributed query nodes to provide a high quality, low latency query service. Onboard data allows PathFinder to deliver the fast response times needed for real time voice and messaging routing decisions. Additional countries not yet integrated are accessed remotely.
Users can query a legacy number in PathFinder and receive either the E212 MCC, MNC or a GSPID identifying the destination operator. In some countries, information may also be available in the form of an alternate GSPID for virtual operators such as MVNOs and “white label” voice services. The MCC MNC codes are uniquely allocated to each mobile operator by the ITU and therefore accurately signal the destination network. The GSPID and AltGSPID are five digit numbers allocated to networks which do not have a MCC MNC code. This allows PathFinder to signal fixed operator destinations with equal accuracy
Example use case: Alternative to HLR Lookup
Key Benefits
SMS Aggregators use HLR Lookup as a key component of their least cost routing solutions. GSMA Pathfinder reduces costs, improves performance, and offers a more reliable solution
Worldwide Coverage:
The Number Portability Discovery service has extensive reach to national Number Plan data with a combination of onboard data and external access covering almost three billion portability susceptible telephone numbers and over 5 billion TNS from 226 countries of number block data.
Simplicity:
Providing a ‘one-stop-shop’ access to worldwide Number Plan data, PathFinder Number Portabilty Discovery Service greatly alleviates System Integration complexity for service providers by allowing them to have a singular standardised data interface, technology and business arrangement for accessing Number Portability data.
Rapid Integration:
Number Portability adoption is spreading across the globe. The PathFinder NP Discovery service leverages powerful data integration technology to rapidly assimilate additional NP data for new corridors as demand dictates.
Number Plan Query Service
PathFinder covers 100% of the world’s number block assignments, over 5 billion TNs fixed and mobile, across 226 countries.
PathFinder Number Plan Query Service complements the Number Portability Discovery Service. It enables users to look up network ownership of non-ported numbers based on international authoritative number block assignments when NP data is not available or relevant.
Summary
By signing up to PathFinder’s Number Portability Discovery service, users will be able to save money on interconnect using least cost routing techniques based on accurate number ownership data. Users will also be ready to migrate to more sophisticated Carrier ENUM data for NGN interconnect.
You can learn more about Number Portability Discovery by registering your interest in GSMA Pathfinder here.
