[Asterisk-biz] LiveVoip Has Level 3 DID's

[brett-asterisk at worldcall.net]

Brandon Patterson wrote:

>A verrrry tired Brandon Patterson stands corrected !
>
>I posted this because, its a question that comes up with
>every call. We do not do LNP at this time because the
>carriers are so busy they just delay you. No sense losing
>huge $$$ to gain small $$$. We are all hoping this will charge.
>
>No Telco ever expected to hand out millions of DID's. I think
>soon DID's are going to become like IP's. We are about to form
>a non-profit group to lobby for this. There needs to be equal access
>to DID's. There needs to be serious improvement to the way in which
>DID's are allocated.
>
>Brandon Patterson
>LiveVoip LLC
>  
>
Woah.. Are you serious? DIDs are managed very well by Neustar and the 
Pooling administration system (PAS at www.nationalpooling.com)
Any "carrier" with an OCN can request DIDs as long as they can prove 
that they are maintining no more than a 6 month supply of numbers. PAS 
coupled with NPAC (the number portability administration center) is a 
very effective way of maintaining the location of where DIDs are. In 
fact, I have several LRNs (Location routing numbers) registered to my 
asterisk servers so that I can port customers directly to my asterisk 
platform. I can even see the LRNs passed in the SIP headers!

Changing this system would have all sorts of ripple effects throughout 
the industry. NPANXX routing tables can be VERY complicated. These 
changes would ripple through PAS,NPAC,NANPA,TRA (traffic routing 
administration which publishes the LERG). etc, etc. Not only that it 
would ripple across Databases like ALI for 911. Non-Geographic porting 
of numbers would become a 911 nightmare (although I believe a well built 
NGN should have NO problem accomodating this, the backward ALI DB 
providers and 911 agencies probably couldn't handle it.. ie: some 911 
operator in the middle of podunk nowhere sees a downtown New York number 
ring in on their terminal, they probably won't realize that that person 
could be local even tho the number isn't.)

Personally, I think the NPA NXX-X administration system is pretty good 
how it is. It's has quite a few barriers to keep the riff raff out, but 
if someone can't handle the process of obtaining NPA NXX-Xs in an area, 
they probably don't need to be owning them anyway. Plenty of "carriers" 
will lease them out. That's my two cents. It's not a monopoly, it's just 
a very involved process.

Also, it seems to me that LNP is a cruital piece of the business. If you 
don't support LNP, you won't get anyone who currently has phone service 
with another provider. If I'm an established business, even if your 
rates are half of someone elses, I'll have to reprint business cards, 
letterhead, update all my clients. It's a royal pain. Now, for new 
businesses, it's no problem. BTW, implementing LNP with a SS7 connected 
switch is really quite easy. Your provider shouldn't be giving you any 
grief over it. And they really shouldn't be overloaded with number 
ports. We use the plain jane system that NPAC sells. It's actually 
called LTI (low tech interface) and we can automate 100s of ports in 
batch simultaniously. LTI is probably the worst (and cheapest) system 
out there but works rather well. FWIW Verisign has a very slick, 
automated number porting system that's even easier (3x the monthly cost!).

Just my $0.02 :)
-Brett