On the one hand, new requirements and regulations of the regulatory authorities in the field of telecommunications brought advantages to subscribers, who can now arbitrarily select an operator and still keep their telephone numbers. On the other hand, this put an obligation on the operators to provide support for this functionality and enable it in their respective networks. Iskratel’s Number-Portability solution provides this functionality at a favorable price.
The number-portability service comprises the following solutions:
- Location (geographic) number portability – allows the end users to keep their number when they move to another geographic location.
- Service portability – allows the end users to keep their telephone numbers when they change the type of telecommunications service (POTS into ISDN, ISDN into POTS, etc).
- Service Provider portability – allows the end users to change their service provider without changing their existing telephone (directory) number.
Typical solution. All the information about the ported numbers is saved in the Number-Portability Database (NPDB). A telephone call sends a request for a ported number in the database, which informs the switch about the new location in the case of portability. For all the ported subscribers the platform could play a short voice announcement that informs the calling party about the porting of the called party.
Benefits
- solution fulfils all the regulatory requirements,
- cost-effective solution,
- offers the freedom to change operators without changing phone numbers (and without informing friends, business partners, clients, etc. about a new phone number),
- implementation removes barriers to competition between operators and services and ensures a dynamic, fully competitive market,
- new revenue growth for operators.