VOIP.com - Internet Phone Service

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 established a national plan to bring healthy competition to the Telecommunications industry. Its goal, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is to remove barriers that prevent companies from entering the telecom field and create an environment where new communications businesses can compete successfully.

What Does It Mean For Consumers?

Congress felt one of the biggest problems was the consumer's inability to take their number with them when they switched from one carrier to another. They discovered that individuals and businesses are less likely to make changes that require the creation of a new number and subsequent updating of contacts.

Local Number Portability (LNP) was enacted to bring this barrier down. The FCC mandates that users be allowed to keep their numbers when switching from:

• Landline Telecommunication providers to Wireless Telecommunication providers
• One Wireless Telecommunication provider to a different Wireless provider

It has also consistently made rulings that ease the portability from Landline and Wireless providers to VoIP providers.

Who is in Charge of Portability?

After the Telecommunications Act became law, the FCC requested proposals from vendors interested in establishing a Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) and a Service Management System (SMS). These enable the implementation of Local Number Portability. It also adopted the Location Routing Number architecture used by AT&T/Lucent Technologies as the industry standard.

Lockheed-Martin Information Management Services, which later became NeuStar, Inc., won the contract and is responsible for operating and managing the NPAC and its Service Management System.

How Does It Work?

Local Service Providers (LSP) maintain databases holding the information needed to ensure proper call routing from one LSP to another. When a customer wants to take their number to another provider, a Service Order Activation (SOA) is generated. This communicates important information between the NPAC and the Local Service Provider. A graphical user interface (the Low Technology Interface) is used to facilitate this process.