Number Portability: A Winner for All

Number Portability allows subscribers to keep their existing telephone numbers as they change operators. Since mid-1990s, many countries started to implement Number Portability. It is a mandate from the European Union to its member states. In Latin America, Brazil and Mexico have already taken the initiative, and will be followed shortly by Dominican Republic, Chile, Perú and others. In Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore were first to implement this initiative, with recent implementations at Pakistan and South Africa.

Why does Number Portability attract so much interest worldwide? Simply put, Number Portability presents a win-win proposition to all key stakeholders, including subscribers (including consumers and businesses), regulators, and operators. It has far-reaching implications to a country’s productivity increase and economical growth.

For subscribers, Number Portability offers the freedom to choose operators while maintaining the same identity - their telephone numbers. Without it, most are reluctant to switch operators, even as they become dissatisfied, due to the inconvenience and cost of informing others. Examples are abundant on operators failing to acquire customers with attractive services without Number Portability.

For regulators, Number Portability enables efficient allocation of their limited numbering resource. More importantly, it is the cornerstone to foster fair competition among operators by removing a key obstacle for subscribers. Fair competition does not mean redistributing the existing market as some may believe. It further “grows the pie” by reaching out to previous underserved markets, and by encouraging innovations from operators to acquire and retain customers. This is not only important to the operator’s bottom line, but also the productivity level and the competitiveness of a nation, as telecommunications is a key contributing factor to a nation’s economical growth.

For operators, Number Portability presents opportunities to acquire new customers and generate higher Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) with new services. While operators are concerned about the investment for Number Portability implementation and possible customer churn, Number Portability affords those with innovative marketing, service features, pricing models, and high quality with growth in subscribers and revenue.

Number Portability requires a strong working relationship between the regulators and operators to succeed. To increase customer adoption, subscriber awareness, simplicity and speed of the porting transaction, and minimal to zero cost per transaction must be addressed. To address the speed of the porting transaction and the costs of porting, two key aspects shall be considered in a Number Portability solution: (1) how to route a call to a ported number, and (2) what must be done when a user requests a port.

Call Forwarding (CF) and All Call Query (ACQ) as the two most prevalent options for operators to route calls to ported numbers. ACQ, where the port data is used for each call, is adopted by most countries. It mitigates the inefficiency and unnecessary charge from CF, where each call is first routed to the original serving operator (“donor”) before being forwarded to the new operator (“recipient”). Some countries, such as France, switched to ACQ after initially choosing CF.

When an operator receives a porting request, it has an option to process the transaction and maintain the data either bilaterally between the donor and recipient operators, or centrally with a clearinghouse. A clearinghouse mediates the porting processes, maintains the reference database, and distributes the updated port data to all operators in a country or region, such as each circle in India. It ensures the transparent implementation of the transaction process, and streamlines the management of port data. It is scalable and evolvable for future needs such as IP interconnection. As such, this is implemented by most countries.

Number Portability is a winning proposition for all stakeholders. Its success requires operators and regulators to jointly select and implement the solution that best fits the country’s market conditions. Implementations worldwide show the preference to a centralized clearinghouse approach with ACQ as it provides the most cost-effective, efficient, and flexible solution.

Gabriela Lago
ViceChair Solutions on Interconnection
Latinamerica and the Caribbean
Telcordia