POWELL BULLISH ON WIRELESS LNP DEBUT, DESPITE POSSIBLE ‘HICCUPS’

Wireless carriers face that deadline for implementing local number portability in the top 100 Metropolitan Statistical Areas. “Let’s let that countdown begin,” Powell told reporters at a National Press Club briefing in which he outlined steps consumers should take to make porting a number easier when switching mobile carriers. Asked about complaints from some LECs that the LNP rules weren’t fair, Powell said: “The only people who are unhappy about local number portability are the people who are afraid to compete for customers, who will now be able to more smoothly move across providers. We believe that the rules are fair. You can move from wireless and wireless and wireline to wireless under most circumstances.”

Powell said wireless LNP involved a simple transfer of a number, but the process was technologically complex and entailed retraining work forces, including retail employees. “There are likely to be some hiccups in the initial period but I think that’s all there will be, hiccups, as people begin to become accustomed to the process,” he said: “They will be modest and minor and very temporary. I think that the technology does work.” As part of a public awareness campaign on LNP, the FCC has an LNP Web site that counts down to Nov. 24. Powell also appeared on Fox and CNBC Tues. to discuss LNP and is to tout the new rules at a Capitol Hill briefing today (Wed.) with Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Asked about the prospects of possible legal challenges to the FCC’s LNP rules, Powell cited the scenario of do-not- call litigation, in which courts stanched efforts to suspend enforcement of the telemarketing list. The 10th U.S. Appeals Court, Denver, last month allowed enforcement of the national do-not-call list pending the outcome of a court case. “I would hope that they wouldn’t bring a suit against the interests of consumers in this way,” Powell said. The example of the do-not-call litigation “demonstrates that this government at all levels is extremely committed to defending its rules and making sure they're ultimately effective. We'll defend any lawsuit aggressively and rigorously.” Speculation has persisted this week that some Bell companies still were looking into a challenge in the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., before Mon. for a stay of a recent wireline-to- wireless LNP order. At our deadline, the only litigation that had been filed was a stay request by 4 rural carriers at the D.C. Circuit on parts of the recent wireless-to-wireless LNP order (CD Nov 18 p1).

Meanwhile, several sources said wireless operators ramped up carrier-to-carrier testing last week with pairs of companies actually were exchanging ported numbers. Under such tests, one carrier acts as the old service provider that’s losing the number that a subscriber is porting to another operator, an industry source said. Many of the tests between pairs of carriers have involved factors such as connectivity to an LNP clearinghouse operated by Telecommunication Services Inc. (TSI), an industry source said.

TSI handles the “preporting coordination process” for several major carriers, including the exchange and validation of service provider information between carriers when a number is ported, said Greg Roberts, NeuStar vp-numbering services. When that process is successful, TSI on behalf of a carrier can send actual porting transactions to a NeuStar- run Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC), which disseminates network routing information. The NPAC both coordinates porting between the old and new service provider to make sure the right person and the right number is being ported and broadcasts updated routing information to service providers, Roberts said.

Separately, Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless signed an agreement outlining how they would port customers’ numbers between them starting Nov. 24. The companies said the pacts addressed “operational details” such as troubleshooting procedures and coordination protocols they would follow during the porting process. In a recent order on wireless-to-wireless LNP, the FCC didn’t require carriers to sign service level agreements, but said porting had to occur upon demand even without an agreement. The companies said they agreed formal porting agreements would let them cooperate better for LNP.

Several carriers have confirmed they have been doing intercarrier testing, including a round of tests last week, although most publicly have been tight-lipped about the results. “There was a cross-carrier testing where everyone got together,” a Nextel spokeswoman said: “We can say they've gone well. We've put tens of thousands of hours into testing internally and externally with other carriers.” An AT&T Wireless spokeswoman said industry had been doing round- robin testing and several wireless carriers had been doing bilateral connectivity testing to make sure that systems could “talk” to one another as part of the LNP process.

Several sources said that, as of Tues., some carriers hadn’t completed end-to-end testing with one another in which a port of a number was tested all the way through the process, from the point at which a customer walked in the door until the number was passed through the NPAC. Some tests have occurred but “it hasn’t happened with a lot of carrier participation at a high-volume level,” an industry source said. With the Nov. 24 deadline approaching, many carriers anticipate it would be difficult for wide-scale testing to occur after Nov. 19 because their attention had to turn to preparing their internal systems for Mon. “We are running out of days,” an industry source said. Testing has been done in areas such as customer service functions and clearinghouses such as that run by TSI and systems operated by NeuStar, the source said. “The real concern with not having completed comprehensive testing as an industry is if the [porting] volumes are very high, we haven’t had an opportunity to stress the system,” the source said.

One problem with testing the ports of larger blocks of numbers is that with numbering resources stretched thin already, it’s difficult to find blocks of tens of thousands of test numbers to run through a trial, the source said. That creates a challenge of coming up with data just for testing purposes and has meant keeping tests smaller in some cases has been more practical, the source said.

Several sources said recent tests had shown improvements in several areas. “Carriers have established better connectivity with each other, the clearinghouses are able to connect and ports are moving from one switch to another and completing the transfer,” an industry source said. One problem that has emerged that still presents a challenge is high fallout rates from certain information that’s entered in a certain carrier’s system one way and isn’t necessarily recognized by another operator’s software, the source said. One area where that has surfaced in some tests has been customer address verification procedures. An address that uses the abbreviation Av. for avenue on a customer’s bill would have to be recognized by the same abbreviation by the operator to which a customer was switching, the source said.