After weighing responses to a March 8 Order and Request for Comment, which was itself a response to Telcordia’s petition to institute competitive bidding for the administration of number portability, the FCC adopted new procedures on May 16 for selecting a new or additional administrators and re-inserted itself more definitively in the process.
The FCC will allow the North American Numbering Council (NANC) and the North American Portability Management LLC (NAPM) to continue to lead the selection process for new administrators, but at the urging of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) the Commission will take final approval authority over any resulting contracts. Telcordia, for its part, requested several changes to the order, some of which the FCC adopted, such as giving the commission approval authority over the RFP, RFI and Technical Requirements Document and designating the commission as arbiter in any disputes that arise in the recommendations process.
The ultimate result of an open bidding process will likely be a multi-vendor solution to managing the databases for number portability. It has been a long wait for those hoping to see the FCC’s original intention of a multi-vendor solution realized. Technically, both Neustar and Perot Systems were named administrators, but Perot failed to meet its commitment, leaving Neustar as the sole administrator.
Telcordia hasn’t won anything yet, but it succeeded – with the help of other such as NASUCA, other advocacy groups and the carriers themselves – in opening the process, a first since the Second Report and Order in 1997 establishing the NPAC. And this week the company said it will participate in the new procurement process.
Telcordia has reiterated what the FCC said in its original order, that “there are clear advantages to having at least two experienced number portability database administrators that can compete with and substitute for each other, thereby promoting cost-effectiveness and reliability in the provision of Number Portability Administration Center services."
Reliability hasn’t been an issue – yet, said Richard Jacowleff, president of Interconnection Solutions at Telcordia. “They have had very good service, but still, it is one vendor and one set of infrastructure. If the NPAC is down for any period that will start to decay service for the entire United States," he said.
Besides, the requirements are getting more complex all the time, which leads to a higher probability of failure at some point. “The ecosystem in ’97 was just the carriers. Today those carriers are dwarfed by the other players like the content guys and other players who want access," Jacowleff said.
Other unrealized benefits that a multi-vendor environment might bring about include price competition and new features. “In monopolistic environment one tends to emphasize stability over change and enhancements. You don’t have the competition to spur you on to do creative things. It’s human nature; it’s just how things work," Jacowleff said.
Telcordia is no wannabe when it comes to NPAC solutions. It has 15 deployments around the globe, including India, which is the largest multi-vendor deployment so far with 700 million subs. “We are pretty confident that Telcordia can offer the industry a pretty competitive next-gen solution that enables the FCC and carriers to achieve the stated advantages of the multi-vendor environment they are looking for," Jacowleff said.
However, he said this type of deployment is not easy and that few companies are well equipped to do so. The amount of testing required and the integration with billing and other BSS/OSS systems makes for a very long process and it is not too early for the process to begin even for a 2015 cutover.
Jacowleff believes at least three vendors will be appointed as administrators and hopes each carriers has its choice on which vendor to use. Ultimately, all participating vendors will have to peer together, share data and ensure that the databases are in sync.
“Hopefully the FCC will be looking for new and interesting ideas on how to do things in a forward-looking way – not that it was done wrong 15 years ago, but this is 2011 so we have to look at what will bring us out to the next 20 years, especially around IP," Jacowleff said.
Telcordia would start with new ideas on the customer dashboard interface and the testing process.
