Mobile number portability1

MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY

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PRESENTED BY, SWATHI.M J. 8TH SEM TCE.

CONTENTS

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1) ABSTRACT

2) INTRODUCTION

3) TYPES OF MNP

4) PORTING PROCESS

5) IMPLEMENTATION

6) FACTORS INFLUENCING SUCCESS OF MNP

7) CHALLENGES FACED WHILE IMPLEMENTING MNP

8) SOLUTION FOR THE CHALLENGES FACED

9) CONCLUSION


Mobile consumers find it hard to move from one network operator to another with a better plan, unless they are ready to change their old mobile number and update all their contacts with the new number. The result is consumers often stick to one operator even if they are dissatisfied with plans or customer service.

Now, with the launch of MNP, consumers can easily switch between operators offering different plans while retaining their old number.

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ABSTRACT


What is MNP??????

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Mobile Number portability (MNP)

Mobile subscribers enables to change their service providers, their location without having to change their existing phone numbers.

On 20th January 2011 MNP was first launched in India.

In mobile networks, Number Portability involves only the MSISDN number, and not the IMSI


A subscriber who switches to another mobile network operator will be allocated a new IMSI together with a new SIM card while retaining MSISDN.

Number Portability could affect all functionalities and services in mobile networks that are based on the MSISDN number, e.g.

All mobile terminated calls All mobile originated calls Short Messages within the Short Message Service (SMS) and MMS Prepaid services Any service based on MSISDN

The portability information of subscribers exists in a database called NPDB.

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TYPES OF NUMBER PORTABILITY


Subscribers can change the service provider while retaining the same phone number. It is also called operator portability. There are 3 sub-types:

o Local Number Portability: The subscriber retains its number when changing from one operator/service provider to another.

E.g. the porting of existing directory number between fixed operators.

It is for geographic numbers.

o Mobile Number Portability: Porting of existing mobile telephone numbers between wireless operators.

o Non-geographical Number Portability: Porting of ‘service’ numbers,

e.g. ‘800’- numbers. It is for services such as free phone.

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PROVIDER NUMBER PORTABILITY


Subscribers can change the subscribed services while retaining the same telephone number.

Service portability allows the subscribers to enjoy the subscribed services in the same way when they roam outside their home networks.

The subscriber retains its number when changing service type. E.g. from POTS to ISDN i.e. Plain old telephone service (POTS) to Integrated Services Digital Network, mobile to fixed, fixed to mobile.

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SERVICE PORTABILITY


This is the ability for an end user to retain the same telephone number without impairment of quality, reliability or convenience when moving from one physical Location to another.

Location portability will allow customers to keep their telephone numbers when they move to another geographic location outside of the original exchange.

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LOCATION NUMBER PORTABILITY


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PORTING PROCESS BASED ON TRAI GUIDELINES



TRAI has recommended mobile to mobile Number Portability within the service area (License Circle) only. The MNP is mandatory for mobile operators of India.

Subscriber shall approach recipient with a porting request & the Recipient shall approach the Donor for porting process completion .

TRAI recommended Porting Mechanism as a “Break before Make‟ (Subscriber service shall be deactivated by the donor operator first & then activated by the Recipient operator) & Porting Duration shall not exceed 3 business days, with a service break Period of less than 2 Hrs.

TRAI proposed to play an announcement to the calling party during “No Service period‟

stating that called party under porting process. The “No Service Period‟ is the time period during which subscriber services are not activated in the recipient end however his services at donor operator network are terminated. As per the Subscriber Licensing Agreement (SLA), this period should not be more than 2 hrs.

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In respect of porting charges, only recipient operator shall permit to charge a fee for porting

Donor shall not use the ported-out number (Unless Subscriber Chooses to Surrender) & ported number shall be reverted back to the Original Number Range Holder once surrendered by the subscriber, the Central clearing house (CCH) shall govern this activity.

The recommended solution for the routing of call is All Call Query (ACQ) by switch based on direct routing without the involvement of donor network.

Licensor shall provide unique Location Routing Number (LRN) to enable routing to ported number. LRN is a 4 digit unique identity of the operator, circle & technology as well.

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2 issues to be considered in implementing number portability:

Number Porting Process

Call Routing

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IMPLEMENTATION


NUMBER PORTING PROCESS: involves a set of parties, which includes donor, recipient and many participants.

The basic requirement of the porting process is that a subscriber needs to initiate a request to the service provider.

The request can be initiated to either of the service providers.

There are two approaches by which the number porting database can be maintained and implemented.

o Peer-to-Peer approach. o Centralized approach

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PEER-TO-PEER APPROACH

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In this approach, there is a bilateral agreement between two service providers.

With this non-standard approach, there can be multiple commercial agreements between the service providers, which make it difficult to manage the terms of each agreement, and track the porting requests.

This approach is very complex, and the complexity is further increased with increasing number of service providers


CENTRALIZED APPROACH

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In this approach, the regulatory authority of the country sets up the guidelines, policies and processes for number portability.

All the service providers in the country have a shared and well-defined interface with a centralized Number Portability (NP) administration center for processing the porting request of a number.

This adheres to a clear set of service level agreements for each of the steps involved in the process and it is mandatory for the service providers to follow them.


Any porting request from any of the service providers is sent to the NP administration center first, to which all the service providers number portability solutions are integrated with.

A request that comes from the new SP to the NP administration center is sent to the present serving SP for clearance and once this is done the central NP administration center broadcasts the porting information to all the service providers in the country.

CALL ROUTING MECHANISM

2 Types of routing:

1)Direct routing

2)Indirect routing

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DIRECT ROUTING

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ALL CALL QUERY

The Originating Network receives a Message/call from the caller and send a query to a centrally administered Number Portability Database (NPDB).

The NPDB returns the routing number associated with the dialed directory number.

The Originating Network uses the routing number to route the call to the new serving network i.e., recipient network.


INDIRECT ROUTING

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A. CALL DROPBACK

This scheme is also known as “Return to Pivot (RTP).” The call steps are as follows:-

The Originating Network receives a call from the caller and routes the call to the donor network.

The donor network detects that the dialed directory number has been ported out of the donor switch and checks with an internal network-specific NPDB.

The internal NPDB returns the routing number associated with the dialed directory number.

The donor network releases the call by providing the routing number.

The Originating Network uses the routing number to route the call to the new serving network.


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B. QUERY ON RELEASE (QoR).


The donor network releases the call and indicates that the dialed number has been ported out of that network. The Originating Network sends a query to its copy of the centrally administered NPDB.

The NPDB returns the routing information of the dialed number. The Originating Network uses the routing information to route the call to the new serving network.


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C. ONWARD ROUTING (OR)


The donor network detects that the dialed directory number has been ported out of the donor switch and checks with an internal network-specific NPDB.

The internal NPDB returns the routing number associated with the dialed directory number.

The donor network uses the routing number to route the call to the new serving network.

This method of routing calls is also known as Call Forwarding.


COMPARISON OF THE ROUTING SCHEMES

All Call Query (ACQ) scheme is the most efficient in terms of using network resources.

The advantages of using ACQ to implement number portability are: No dependency on other network for routing the call. Easy billing for calls to the ported numbers. Call set-up time for calls to ported numbers is minimal. Minimal impact on signaling. Impact on network complexity is very less.

Whereas, other Routing mechanisms like onward routing, call drop back and query on release is Dependant on other network for routing the call. Network is complex and time consuming.

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Subscriber Awareness

Simplicity

Speed

Cost factor

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FACTORS INFLUENCING THE SUCCESS OF NUMBER

PORTABILITY


Number Portability Setup Costs

The setup costs includes: - Central NPDB setup cost, Software development or upgrade, Network upgrade, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) upgrade. Cost involved in upgrading the billing system. Number Portability Maintenance Costs

The maintenance cost includes the following: Cost for the agreed procedure involved in the porting process, activating the ported number, provisioning the routing information, and informing all the service providers of the ported number. Call Routing Costs

Routing the call to a ported number is one of the major issues in NP.

In case of ACQ, the originating network needs to make a query to the NP database irrespective of whether the called number is ported or not.

Even the other schemes of NP implementation has their own impacts on the network signaling, database queries, and other network resources, which directly influence the network traffic adding on to the cost.

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CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING NUMBER PORTABILITY


Regulatory bodies can consider the following points in arriving at a better model for cost sharing to implement number portability.

Number of subscribers per service provider should be the base at the time of setting up the NP System.

The service providers can incur the annual maintenance costs for using the service of the central NPDB.

This can be for the services used such as NPDB system and customer help desk usage.

These costs should be based on the usage of the central NPDB or based on the quality of service such as the bandwidth for accessing the central NPDB.

Recipient service provider can pay for the costs incurred by the centralized NPDB for any subscriber that ports to its network.

Recipient service provider can pay for the costs incurred by the donor for each ported number

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SOLUTION


To implement number portability, the best solution is to implement the centralized system, maintain a common number porting database, and use the All Call Query (ACQ) call routing scheme to route the calls to a ported number.

The number portability gives freedom to subscriber to choose best service provider. Also service provider has to be competitive to attract the customer. This will encourage competition among the service providers, and in turn will reduce the

tariff. From subscribers point of view it reduces cost, time and money. From service providers point of view specific network maintenance activities need to be

done to ensure proper operation of the number portability service over time.

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CONCLUSION


[1] Yi-Bing Lin, “Mobile Number Portability”, IEEE – Network

[2] Young Sic Jeong, Whan Woo Kim, “The Realization of Mobile Number Portability in Korea”, IEEE –Network

[3] Rajeev Ranjan Kumar, Amrita Singh, A. Damodaram, “Phone Number Portability in GSM networks”, CSI Vol. 32, Issue-7, Oct.2008.

[4] Telecommunication N/W Management – Haojin Wang

[5] http://www.mobilein.com/MNP.htm

[6] http://previewcareers.aricent.com/in/whitepapers/mobile-services/mnp.pdf

[7] MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY Wikipedia, Google advanced search.

[8] www.icact.in

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REFERENCESMOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY

Engineering

Mobile number portability1