[asterisk-users] Mobile Number to Mobile carrier mapping

[Alex Balashov]

On Wed, 9 May 2007, Ritesh Agrawal said something to this effect:

> Is there a way to find out the mobile/landline carrier name based on the 
> phone number?

   Ordinary people can only find this out if the NPA-NXX (area code + 
exchange, i.e. the first six digits) block to which the number belongs
is assigned or delegated to a particular mobile carrier.  So, what you'd
really be looking up is a particular NPA-NXX block's registered ownership.

   There are many ways to get this information.  You can go to 
localcallingguide.com and do an "Area Code/Prefix/OCN" search.  There's 
also telcodata.us, and I imagine some others.  Or you can download the
NXX block assignment spreadsheet straight from NANPA's web site.  This
type of CO information is public and relatively ubiquitous, if you know
where to look.

   One caveat is that this information can be somewhat out of date or
inaccurate, especially in 10000-blocks that have subdelegations across
carriers.

   The other is that this will not properly identify a phone number's origin 
for you if it's been ported away from the block-owning carrier under the 
Local Number Portability regime, to someone else in the LATA.  This trend 
has become especially accelerated with the advent of VoIP, when there is 
additional incentive to get your service from another LEC because it's not 
just purely a matter of someone's POTS vs. someone else's POTS (or ISDN or 
whatever).

   To really know what OCN (Operating Carrier Number) a number is assigned
for sure, you have to make a query against Neustar's NPAC database, which
SS7 STPs use to do LNP dips.  Most mere mortals do not have that ability
readily at their disposal, as for the most part any kind of visibility into
NPAC is contingent upon being a carrier and operating a switch.  Some
service providers that are not carriers may have it as well, and I don't
really know what Neustar's guidelines for that are.

   Based on localcallingguide.com, the number you provided is a CommPartners 
number, as per:

   http://www.localcallingguide.com/lca_prefix.php?npa=415&nxx=234&x=&ocn=&region=&lata=&switch=&pastdays=0&nextdays=0

   An LNP dip confirms that this number is in fact part of CommPartners, but 
shows it is not in that original OCN.  It is under OCN 533C, which is also 
CommPartners, but possibly a slightly different trunking handoff, or 
whatever the logistical difference is.

Hope that helps,

-- Alex

--
Alex Balashov   <sasha at presidium.org>