NEW YORK-AG Communication Systems Inc., Phoenix, has introduced a “Triggerless Number Portability” solution, which it said will permit wireless carriers with Signaling System 7 functions in their networks to avoid number portability charges imposed by incumbent local exchange carriers.
Marvin Distel, AG applications engineer for number portability, said he has heard informal figures that about 25 percent of the wireless carriers in this country today have SS7-capable networks.
Local number portability allows customers to retain their current telephone numbers when changing phone companies. Once they change carriers and keep their old numbers, the customers are called “ported subscribers” and their phone numbers are called “ported numbers.”
The federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 mandates local exchange carriers in the 100 largest metropolitan areas to support local number portability by year-end.
To recover some of the expensive network upgrade costs associated with local number portability provision, LECs plan to charge third parties-including wireless and long-distance services providers-a transaction fee for making the dip, or database query, necessary to route calls. The fee, according to AG, has been estimated conservatively at one-third of a cent to 1 cent per call. It will apply to all calls that pass through LEC networks, whether they are to a ported number or not.
AG’s solution employs an open architecture that operates on a tandem service control point, which is a large database, and it works with all the major service control points on the market, he said. “Depending on the size of the carrier, the number of transactions, the size of the databases, payback on TNP will occur within two to three months. Installation takes a few hours,” said Carl Glaeser, general manager of INgage solutions for AG.
Wireless carriers are not required to support LNP until mid-1999, and there is action pending that would delay that effective date by at least several months, said Glaeser. Triggerless Number Portability will allow carriers to delay switch upgrade costs until full wireless number portability deployment is mandated, AG executives said. However, Glaeser noted, “you don’t use it and throw it away; it’s part of our road map solution.”
A $400 million joint venture of Lucent Technologies Inc., majority stake holder, and GTE Corp., AG Communication Systems’ product line includes digital switching systems, authorization call routing equipment and network-based prepaid wireless services.
