[Asterisk-biz] Call termination database

[Kevin P. Fleming]

alex at pilosoft.com wrote:

> Telcordia LERG contains the real routing information. For a given NPA-NXX,
> it maps into LATA and into OCN. Now, carriers group OCNs into "tiers"  
> (just groups of carriers with similar rates).  Usually Tier 1 is RBOC,
> Tier 6 is NECA, and those tiers are uniform across all termination
> providers. All other "tiers" are subject to individual carrier's
> termination agreements, and they can be "CLEC", "Cellular", "RBOC
> Cellular" etc. Those OCN-Tier mappings are somewhat individual among 
> carriers who sell termination.

I wasn't considering NANPA as much as I was the rest of the world :-) In 
NANPA, 99% of the routes are the same cost for nearly everyone (unless 
you are an OC yourself). Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean being the 
notable exceptions, of course.

Certainly I could see some value in publishing +1 rates down to NPA-NXX 
level for certain parts of the country (as you say, NECA routes are a 
biggie). I don't think we need to try to duplicate much LERG 
information, though. If I publish a route for +1602, that covers all of 
+1602 unless there are exceptions listed at a more detailed level (if 
there were NECA or cellular at-cost routes here, but there aren't). When 
the routing database is used, if you always do a longest-match-wins, 
then we don't need to list every single NPA-NXX combination, only the 
exceptions.

Same goes for international routes too: +44 is primarily a single rate, 
except for cellular routes and premium numbers, which can be identified 
using a prefix string.