Porting numbers was never this easy

The specific price of the Number Portability Clearinghouse depends on several factors, such as your set-up and requirements. These are the most important aspects that determine pricing:  

• Local or cloud hosting: the solution can either run in the cloud or in a local data center. Cloud hosting gives you more flexibility and is cost-effective;
• Market size: a bigger market (e.g., number of subscribers and connections) means more porting requests, which impact platform requirements. Note that this is only a price determining factor pre-launch. An active solution can be scaled without additional costs.
• Specific needs: if we align the number portability process with international best practices, we will be able to configure the platform without customization. This results in an economical solution and shorter time to market.  
• Contract term: a longer term of the contract allows you more time and opportunity to recover costs than a shorter term contract.

Experience shows that implementation of the number portability usually takes 9 to 12 months, from project launch to a fully available service for end users. The part where PXS is mainly involved – specification gathering, implementation and training – is completed in four months.

After those four months, all operators need to be connected and the solution must be thoroughly tested. This includes porting functionality testing and routing tests run between operators.

Successful adaptation of number portability largely depends on the end user’s familiarity with the service. We recommend running a promotional campaign pre-launch.

1. BSS/CRM: administrative system processes and workflows must be adjusted in order to handle requests of customers who want to join or leave the operator.
2. Core network and routing systems: routing functions must be adjusted to confirm that calls and text messages are delivered to the correct network. If this is not set up correctly, calls or texts will never be received.

The Number Portability Clearinghouse complies with all international best practices for number portability, including:

• Recipient-led process: the porting process is initiated and led by the recipient operator. After all, this is the party the customer wants to switch to. It prevents ‘win-back’ activities by the donor operator.
• Customer validation: validation is key to the verification of a porting request. Of course, the recipient operator will check the identity of the new customer. Additionally, the Number Portability Clearinghouse will verify the subscriber’s porting request (e.g., through SMS validation).
• Personal data minimization: the Number Portability Clearinghouse exchanges as little customer data as possible and minimizes the amount of personal data processed in order to ensure fast and easy porting.

Introducing number portability liberalizes the telecom market and offers the following benefits:

• Driving competition: enabling number portability prevents the existence of monopolies in the telecom market. Numbers are easily switched to another operator, giving smaller operators a better shot at a market share. 
• Improved business climate: as number portability liberates the telecom market, new parties are more likely to enter. This improves the business climate and drives competition.  
• Better quality of service: with increased competition, operators have to improve and invent ways to attract and retain customers. They are more inclined to innovate, to lower their prices and to provide a higher level of service overall.

Running the Number Portability Clearinghouse in the cloud is just as safe as operating it locally. Depending on your local set-up, it may even be safer to run the platform in the cloud. Our application is secure by design, and we take technical and organizational measures for data security and availability. These measures include regular audits and assessments of our solutions, carried out by and independent company.

Also consider these general safety benefits of the cloud:

1. Increased availability: in the cloud, the platform data is stored in multiple data centers that are geo-redundant. If one server goes down, the other server instantly takes over. Achieving this on a local level is expensive.
2. Improved physical security: major cloud providers spare no expense to protect their data centers. They have state-of-the-art physical and digital security, as well as round-the-clock security monitoring.
3. 24/7 security monitoring: cloud providers also invest in a security operations center (SOC), monitoring the infrastructure 24/7. It is costly and challenging to achieve this on a local level.
4. No out-of-date hardware: to run a secure platform locally, hardware has to be replaced when its economical and physical lifecycle ends (usually every five years). This often includes renewing software licenses as well. When using the cloud, this is not an issue.

When number portability is enabled, international voice & SMS routing require extra attention. Calls and messages from international numbers are often routed to the original operator, even if the number has already been ported out.

A commercial agreement on rerouting is common practice, specifying that the original operator forwards calls and SMSes to the new operator. International parties can also receive access to data of the Number Portability Clearinghouse, in order for them to set up their routing correctly. The NPC provider will facilitate the authorization of access.

Everyone using the Number Portability Clearinghouse receives tailored customer support. Documentation is centrally available, and your users are properly onboarded and trained. Because the platform is delivered as a managed service, we will keep it up-to-date and add new functionalities. Of course, the platform is also monitored continuously, to ensure you are notified of issues in a timely manner.