[asterisk-biz] Wireless lookup service

[Alex Balashov]

Not that many numbers are ported--especially wireless numbers as you say.

But be aware that querying NANPA blocks is not enough;  for 10,000 
blocks, you can just get the office code spreadsheet off their site.

But many blocks are pooled into thousand blocks, which is a system 
administered by Neustar.  678-336 is an example.  To see how it's split 
up, you can go to www.nationalpooling.com.  Telcodata.us and 
localcallingguide.com will also tell you this, although not always in a 
wholly up-to-date manner.

Nationalpooling.com, unlike some of the buried resources on NANPA's 
site, appears to be specifically designed to prevent automated data 
collection and scraping.  I imagine it is possible to get the data from 
them in a more machine-processable way, but it requires that you be a 
carrier (try to sign up for an account to see what I mean).

As Nathan said, you will still be mostly right, most of the time, 
without LNP dips.  Relatively few ports go on in the wireline world 
outside of business related to VoIP service providers, which are a very 
DID-intensive industry.

Nathan Shadle wrote:

> So this is a loaded question...
>  
> The short, yet inaccurate, answer is that I use http://telcodata.us/
>  
> The longwinded answer goes like this:
> With the advent of Number Portability (both Local Number Portability and 
> Wireless Number Portability), that data changes on a day-to-day basis as 
> users swap from provider to provider, and other reasons numbers might 
> shift from one carrier to another. The only true maintainer of which 
> provider serves a particular number is NANPA (which contracts Neustar to 
> handle this), which is who the carriers report their changes and ports 
> to.  Even the major carriers get daily updates to this data, or they 
> query Neustar themselves.
>  
> There are a number of somewhat expensive methods to access this data 
> (I say expensive to mean it's cost prohibitive for many small 
> businesses). Most revolve around getting SS7 access (equipment and 
> service) or getting an account with Neustar directly (which often 
> requires you to be a carrier yourself). You can pay a number of 
> companies like Verisign or NetNumber per query (which, just get their 
> data from Neustar). You might be able to locate a provider who will 
> offer to provide queries for you, say, through HTTP, but I'm reasonably 
> certain (if I remember correctly from my Neustar legal documentation) 
> that they expressly forbid this, and require that the data just be used 
> for routing.
>  
> So, your best bet might be to use a database like I've mentioned above 
> with a "best guess" approach. All my research leads me to believe you'll 
> get somewhere around 95% accuracy, though perhaps more for wireless 
> because people tend not to port wireless numbers as frequently.
>  
> Nathan

-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
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