National LNP Billing Forum
Meeting Minutes
Dallas, Texas
10/14/97
Introductions:
Attendees: (see www.ported.com, National Billing Forum, Teamlist for phone numbers/e-mail addresses)
Anderson, MJ |
USWest |
Basmajian, Armen |
AT&T |
Blakeley, Jill |
Time Warner |
Bowen, Todd |
GTE |
Brazil, Patrick |
Lefcon/Conrow |
Brooks, Suzanne |
MCI |
Carter, Rick |
Citizens Communications |
Clarke, David |
Ameritech |
Cockrell, Betty |
Billing Concepts |
Durkin, Kathi |
NEXTLINK |
Elliott, Elaine |
Bell Atlantic |
Elsden, Damon |
Ericsson |
Ferguson, Debi |
Pacific Bell |
Fohl, Mike |
Cincinnati Bell |
Frey, Scott |
Bell Atlantic |
Gadbois, Marla |
MCI Local |
Havens, Ken |
Sprint Local |
Jackson, Mark |
GTE |
Keddy, Elizabeth |
Nortel |
Liu, Shu-hwa (Sue) |
Lucent |
Lohr, Steve |
Sprint |
Martin, Larry |
Citizens Communications |
Meentemeyer, Karen |
Southwestern Bell |
Meleski, Connie |
Roseville |
Passler, Cathy |
Sprint Local |
Rollins, John |
GTE |
Schultz, Arnette |
Lucent |
Shepard, Steve |
GTE |
Sing, Luis |
Ericsson |
Steiner, Anne |
AT&T |
Trosper, Katy |
TSTCI/ORTC |
Udeshi, Raj |
Siemens |
Vandeventer, Celynn |
Sprint |
Weber, Les |
GTE |
Whitney, Dave |
Bell South |
Witte, Pat |
Southwestern Bell |
Zarbock, Marv |
USWest |
Review minutes from 9/24 conference call
ACTION
NO |
Description |
Responsible |
1 |
Check to find out how ATIS funding works and get the information out to the team. |
Dave Whitney |
2 |
Team members to come up with Mission, Scope, Process and Deliverables drafts by 10/15 |
All |
3 |
Contact your T1AG rep and make them aware of billing’s needs from T1. |
All |
4 |
Change National Issues document name to National LNP Billing Forum Issues |
Debi Ferguson |
5 |
Talk to Bellcore - any way to signal 800 provider down to regional databases so that 800 provider information can be derived in the billing systems? AMA changes required? |
MJ Anderson |
6 |
Hand off 800 issues to SNAC |
MJ Anderson |
7 |
Add new issue for tandem routing problem. |
Debi Ferguson |
8 |
Check to see if your company is impacted by tandem routing issue |
All |
ATIS STATUS
- Dave attended ATIS meeting in New Jersey 10/9-10.
- ATIS has agreed that the T1 organization will take over the LNP Switching & Signaling requirements. Their focus is Service Provider Portability, NOT Location Portability.
- WWW.ATIS.ORG has all of the documentation for ATIS.
- T1 is technical requirements committee for network/switching
- T1S1 - deals with signaling issues.
- John Manning and Harold Dodder (sp?) invited Dave to come to the meeting
- Dave gave them an overview of what our team does.
- LNP requirements work has been assigned to the T1 Advisory Group (T1AG). This group was looking for recommendations for a work plan. They have been given a year to put a generic requirements document together. This is different from their normal activity in that they generally develop standards and not requirements.
- Several companies made recommendations
- Western Region Outline - USWEST took ICC requirements and other LNP requirements document and developed an outline detailing what the LNP Requirements document should include. The Western Region Requirements document can be found at www.ported.com.
- MCI Proposal - Each ATIS working group is called a TSC (Technical Sub-Committee). MCI wanted a new TSC formed for LNP.
- Ameritech Proposal - Make an T1-LNP group. The billing team would be T1.LNP.1.
- Nortel Proposal - Fold LNP billing requirements under an existing committee. Setting up a new committee entails a great deal of admin setup.
- Recommendation - T1S1 will have a new sub-committee to work on the LNP requirements. T1AG will vote on 10/21.
- National LNP Billing Forum needs to develop a mission statement, define scope/identify deliverables
- Funding is another issue.
- Anyone is welcome to make a contribution to ATIS, but only dues-paying members can vote.
- We would develop requirements from a billing point of view and hand them off to the LNP Requirements group to add it to the Requirements document and figure out whether any signaling/standards changes will be required to implement the change.
- T1 will address things other than signaling and switching requirements. USWEST’s outline includes SCP and Operator services and wireless.
- We need to take the National Issues Document and write them up as a requirements statement. There may be issues where this team does not have the expertise to write the requirement.
- ATIS questioned what does "Billing" mean. AMA requirements only, end user bill formats, Regulatory issues?
- Need to make a distinction between our purpose and OBF’s.
- Mission, Scope, Process and Deliverables need to be defined by the end of this meeting. Please bring contributions on Wednesday.
- Per Arnette, we need to number any requirements that we come up with, for traceability reasons. They will probably get renumbered when they are incorporated into the new LNP Requirements document.
- Some states are having to deal with inconsistent rate centers with SPLNP. This creates a need for location portability type functionality. May be able to include this in our ATIS scope by making it clear that these ARE SPLNP issues.
- We all need to convince our T1AG reps that the industry MUST address inconsistent rate centers, Location Portability and Wireless NOW. If we wait, we’ll be in the same mess that we got into with SPLNP. There was general consensus on this approach, although one company dissented.
- Is GR-2936 proprietary information? Can we use their words where we liked their solutions?
800 Issue Update
- Pat re-stated the 800 call routing issue.
- Should this be an issue? Does issue #19 address this?
- Has this been brought up to the Implementation Forum? SNAC knows about it.
- Anyone offering originating number screening for products (e.g. 1-800-PIZZAS) could have difficulty as the originating NPA/NXX is used to identify the closest location. Under a porting scenario, it is possible for the customer to be porting within the rate center, but the NPA.NXX not provide sufficient specificity to identify the closest business location.
- The question was asked, can the donor company keep the 800 business when the pots routeable ports out? This could be because the new provider does not offer 800 service or because the company views the 800 product as separate from the local service.
- It was pointed out that if the new carrier did not provide 800 service this could be a possibility.
- The problem is that if a number ports, there may be no way for a pots routeable company to determine the 800 provider if it’s not them.
- If the customer calling the 800 number is the 800 company’s customer, their billing system would be able to retain the 142 record to bill for the 800 service.
- The problem occurs when a third party calls the donor’s 800 number. The third party will send the billing record (142) to the new pots-routeable company, based on the LRN. Do business agreements need to be developed so that the pots routeable company knows to send the record to the 800 provider. Should some type of settlements apply?
- No way for pots routeable company to determine 800 provider if it’s not them.
- Current pre-LNP situations exist (e.g. time of day routing), where one company’s 800 number can terminate to another company’s pots routeable.
- 2-PIC impact? Don’t think so with 800.
- Is this 800 resale? Would this solve the problem? What if the new provider doesn’t want to resale old provider’s 800 service?
- Today, to change 800 providers, you have to disconnect and new connect with new provider.
- Is the 800 provider in this case really involved in call transiting to have a right to 800 revenue? All they provide is the query. The call is routed via the pots routeable company’s network.
- REQUIREMENT: Need a way to identify 800 service provider in AMA (vs. pots routeable owner). There is no short term resolution to this problem until OCN of the 800 provider can be signaled through the network.
Originating Company |
800 Provider |
Terminating Company |
Problem? |
A |
A |
A |
No |
A
CC142
Send 010125 EMR to B |
B |
B REC - Receives 010125-EMI/R
Pots # & NPA/NXX Owner |
No - |
A
CC142
Send 010125 EMR to B
OR keep it! |
A |
B |
No - Either A or B can bill based on settlement arrangements/agreements. For A to keep 800 revenue, would have to guide based on 800 #, not pots routeable |
C calls A’s 800 number
Creates 142 with LRN, sends to B |
A |
B - Ported pots routeable
B doesn’t know to send record to A |
Yes - C would send 142 to B. C contracts with A to do 800 queries.
Is A entitled to keep 800 revenue? |
The first three examples currently exist without LNP. In 4, we assume that B is porting out of A and A keeps the 800 service and A, B and C are all LNP capable. In this example, C has an arrangement for A to provide the 800 database service. PacBell pointed out that based on time of day routing, company A could provide the routing during most of the day, but another company could provide the routing after normal business hours.
WESTERN REGION ISSUES 49 and 57
- These Western Region issues detail the same problems as Delta Issues number 2 & 3 and contain some possible solutions for these issues.
John handed out Western Region Issues 49 and 57. These are available on www.ported.com under the Western Region icon, under Requirements.
ICC requirements do not have an aggregate AMA record defined for the SCP
Co A goes though Co B’s tandem to Co C. Katy Trosper has heard of at least 1 company that views the tandem company as the N-1 provider! This is pre-default routing query billing. Is this legal? They will query at the originating switch and bill the tandem provider, or file waiver, not be LNP capable and let tandem do query and bill for it. There are many different opinions in the industry regarding the definition of N-1.
Do end user records provide adequate data for N-1 query billing?
If don’t turn on attempt recording, may miss 25 to 30 % of last resort query billing.
NEW ISSUES
EAS ISSUE
- If LRN is in a different rate center than the dialed digits, the call may be routed to the recipient switch over the wrong trunk group (toll vs. EAS).
- If LRN indicates that you should have dialed ‘1’ first, call might fail.
- Does switch route based on LRN or dialed digits? Per ICC, call typing should have been done based on dialed digits, not LRN
- Post-query screening is causing Toll Denial problems.
- If route based on LRN, may select wrong trunk if you route locals over different trunk than toll..
- Can cause settlement problems.
- We will not make an issue out of this yet, pending vendor fixes.
- LNP Implementation forum is also addressing this issue.
LSPI - Local Service Provider ID
- Scott Frey gave an overview of the LSPI work to date. Bellcore is developing GR-2970 Local Service Provider Identification.
- The Bellcore Technical Forum expects to complete its work in November and the GR should have general availability in 12/97. An ILR will accompany the document and all companies will have the opportunity to make comments. Future work will be scheduled for 1998. Check the Bellcore Digest for more news.
TANDEM CALL FAILURE ISSUE
- Debi presented the following issue:
...If a FGD/B, Wireless or CLC hands a call off to the Tandem, and if that
call is unqueried, the Tandem will in an LNP environment do a query; if the
returned LRN is a code that does not home on that Tandem under current and
various rules the Tandem will either block the call (FGB/D) or, if
Wireless/CLC the call will go thru, but CABS might have a problem with it.
The condition where this might happen is where a single rate area contains
more than one end office, and at least one of those end offices homes on a
tandem different from the other office(s). This can happen in our network
today where those EOs are a combination of ours and CLCs'/WSPs' or just
ours alone. It's predictable that it will happen more in the future as
Access Tandem competition increases. If you do research to discover cases
where the possibility exists today in our network, and the Tandem opens
translations to allow routing to the exceptional end offices there still
exists the possibility that CABS has a problem with this (not expecting the
CLC’s CLLI to subtend this Tandem)
- If tandem’s have IT trunks between them, meet point billing would apply (if
the call completes).
- Rate center consolidation could make this problem worse.
- Today calls get directed to the wrong tandem. How are they handled?
- Could add all portable codes in the lata to the table (Foreign Prefix, NOC), but this would allow all misrouted traffic to go through, ported or not.
- FCC may have ruled that it’s ok to block traffic if it’s routed to the wrong tandem.
- Does the LERG need to change to allow other tandems.
- Check to see if this impacts your company.
- Calls being blocked will reduce the receiving company’s access revenues and cause customer complaints.