Billing Services Group

When the federal government implemented telephone number portability years ago, it gave telephone customers the ability change carriers and keep their existing telephone number. This means a customer can move between wireless carriers or between a cable company and a traditional wireline carrier and not have to change their telephone number.

The move was designed to level the playing field for new telecommunication companies and spur on competition. While the goal has been realized, number portability has created some interesting challenges for companies in the telecommunications space. Number portability has caused a fundamental change in the way the industry looks at telephone numbering. The industry has evolved from a very simple system to one that is much more complex. Back in the days before number portability, simply performing a lookup on the area code and exchange (NPA-NXX) of a specific telephone number identified the telecommunications company responsible for the number, the geographic location of the number, and the type of services it supported. The methodology made routing calls, inter-carrier settlements and the billing of third party charges simple and straight forward.

Flash forward to today – with multiple telecommunication players (traditional wireline, wireless operators, cable companies, other CLECS (resellers), MVNOs and pure play VoIP providers) all using the same numbering resources and consumer phone numbers bouncing from company to company, the use of the traditional six (or seven) digit look up to determine the company the end user perceives as his service provider is not only out of date but often provides completely inaccurate information.

Today, you must look at a telephone number at a 10 digit level to correctly identify the telephone company associated with the number. And even with 10 digits, questions can still arise, for instance, when an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) resells a larger company’s networks, it is still difficult to identify the provider. It’s important to know who owns a customer from a network perspective vs. a billing perspective.

BSG has made a significant investment over the years in working to understand the impact number portability has had on telephone numbering. We have worked to develop tools which access the industry information that companies need to correctly identify the current owner of telephone numbers. BSG provides not only the tools companies need but provides our specific industry expertise.  We have tools that assist in the guiding, routing and billing of telecom services. BSG’s proprietary business information hub, BC BETI, provides access to the leading telecommunications industry sources via real-time batch or on-line interfaces. Our technical support team can help recommend the service which will best fit each of our customer’s individual needs.

Bottom line: It’s important for each company to understand how number portability has impacted their specific business operations and why it is so critical, to look beyond the first seven digits.
At least for now, 10 is the magic number.