Telecommunications and Internet converged Services and Protocols for Advanced Networking (TISPAN); Portability of telephone numbers between operators for Next Generation Networks (NGNs) (V3.1.1)
"The present document focuses on number portability (NP) for telephone numbers from national numbering plans (NNP) for Next Generation Networks (NGNs). These national numbering plans are based on ITU-T Recommendation E.164 [i.19]. Identifier Portability@ i.e. portability of other public identifiers than telephone numbers (e.g. name based SIP URIs or SIP/tel URIs with a specific phone-context) is outside the scope of the present document@ but it is recognized that this could be the topic of a future separate study. The present document identifies ways to support portability of telephone numbers (e.g. E.164 numbers) between Service Providers (SP) - so called ""service provider portability"" (SPP). The term operator in the present document is used instead of Service Provider and the report identifies functionality needed to support the following portability scenarios: ?Between NGN operators; ?From NGN operators to PSTN/ISDN SPs; ?From PSTN/ISDN SPs to NGN operators. NOTE: The types of telephone numbers that are subject to portability is a national matter@ and are therefore not addressed in the present document. The support for number portability can be divided in two distinct processes: a) the process of porting a telephone number from one operator to another; and b) the process to establish a call to a telephone number that may be ported. The first process a) would include the actions from: ?the request of the telephone number to be ported; ?the distribution and storage of NP Data (NPD) that the telephone number is ported from one operator to another operator@ and at which time the porting takes effect; ?making the necessary NPD available to the data base environment that are accessible in real time from the communication processing systems; ?allowing communication establishment to the operator that currently serves the telephone number. The second process b) would include information: ?how data bases in the real time environment can be accessed and NPD can be retrieved; ?from where the NPD can be retrieved; ?how the NPD can be carried and used and transformed to NP Routing Information (NRI) for the establishment of the communication to the current operator. The detailed process of porting a telephone number and storage and distribution of NPD is essentially an administrative process@ that may differ very much from country to country. The present document considers mainly the following: ?NGN network architecture specific for number portability; ?how the NPD obtained from the real time data base environment is used to route sessions@ based on NRI@ within and between networks. However@ some information relating to the process of porting a telephone number is provided in annex A@ and how to populate and make NPD and ENUM data available to the real time environment is provided in annexes B and C. Clause 5 gives an high level framework concerning different kind of DBs in the real time and in the non-real time environment of the NGN on different levels (i.e. operator@ national and international level)."