LNP Steering Committee Minutes May 21st, 1998

Notice: Larry Vasquez is leaving AT&T and going to Lucent Technologies.

Donna just received the project plan from Lockheed. Release 1.4 will be delieved on 8/28/98 and it will take at least two weeks for intra-service provider and regression testing. It should be placed into production by mid to late September. Release 1.4 will still be separate from 2.0. The subcommittee is making textual clarifications to the process flows and should be done by mid-July.

NANC T&O: National pooling committee met in Chicago and will not be able to meet the end of June deadline to complete the national pooling guidelines. It most likely will be done by the end of July. A major point is what is the minimun size block for port on demand that still will support efficient data representation (EDR). The block size is being referred to as "x" for now. The national committee is referring the issue to T1S1.6 for guidence. MCI asked why the committee felt that T1S1.6 could answer that question. Donna said that EDR could be left as an implemetation issue to the vendors and the vendors and technical people on T1S1.6 would be better to answer the block size question. Once the pooling requirements are completed they will go to the LLCs. These will be requirements for wireline and wireless companies as well. (Wireless is asking for the porting time to go from 3 days to 2 hours). The NANC pooling committee will meet in Chicago, June 1 – 3 at Ameritech, 30 S. Wacker Drive, Media Room, 34th Floor. The Illinois team will meet on June 3 after NANC adjourns, from 2 – 5.

FCC NRO is looking into the issue of individual telephone number (ITN) porting. A service provider(SP) could port numbers one at a time from the pooling administrator instead of a thousands block. NRO has an ITN subcommittee discussing the issue.

At the last state workshop, carriers agreed that a stipulation should be drafted to covered interim number portability cost recovery. Ameritech is supposed to talk with the other carriers and inform them of the costs that Ameritech has been keeping track of. Although there was no definite consenous, an agreement where each carrier would be responsible for 50% of the costs seemed to be the most likely to be accepted. If a stipulation can be agreed to, the ICC staff will file it with the Commission in docket 97-0633.

Today’s Agenda

Lockheed to be approved as pooling administrator

Updates on the various releases

Election of new officers

Status of the budget

Possibly there will be discussion on the IVR pins administration issue. Lockheed has a plan to cover the cost and responbsibility issues and will present it to the LLC.

Lockheed was asked about the liability stipulation. To Lockheed’s knowledge, the requested changes were not made as of yet. Lockheed was also asked what would happen if non-LLC member carriers particpating in number pooling would not sign the stipulation releasing Lockheed from liability in connection with number pooling. Lockheed replied that they would have to check with their legal department.

The signaling looping issue will not effect number pooling in 847 if only pre-port is used. The next conference call will be Tuesday, May 26th. They will discuss which open issues should be sent to a national level to be deceided and which can be solved locally. If only pre-port is used, the looping issue goes away. Database mismatching can occur in a mixed environment and that will cause looping.

An issue was brought by Brian Baldwin concerning the porting of numbers for data. Major discussion followed as to wether or not numbers used for data (ISDN) could be used for pooling. It was decided that a SP could use a ported number received from the pool that was originally used for data. The protocol for packet switched is different than that for voice and circuit switched. The packet address would have to be changed. Larry will ask Brian to clarify the issue at the next pooling subcommittee meeting.

Law enforcement wants to have a direct connection to the IVR and to have the IVR database contain all TNs wether ported or not. An open issue is still the pins. The short term goal is to get the system going and the long term goal is to deceide the ongoing administration and responsibility.

The new entrant document is finished. Robin Meiers will attach the form to the document and then distribute it.

The testing of the paper process has begun but only AT&T is participating. MCI sited changes to the test plan as their reason for waiting. Lockheed wants to make sure that all processes work Paper process to begin May 18th.

The next conference call will be June 15th. An issue to be further discussed is when a new NPA/NXX is opened in an LNP capable switch, it will be marked in the LERG as opened for porting. This will not trigger database audits.

There was some discussion as to inter-service provider porting testing. Access to Lockheed’s test bed was not granted, but Lockheed said that some SPs wanted to test it live and there was some miscommunication between the parties.

A question was brought about the new overlay NPA in 847. Additional trunks would have to be added to the selective routers and that would be an additional cost to the PSAPs and the SPs. Brent suggested that the issue should be brought up to the number administrator at Ameritech.

The start date for the trial in 847 is June 1. MCI asked why this was still being called a trial if pooling has be mandated in 847 by the ICC. After some discussion, there seemed to be general agreement that the word trial could be dropped. Brent is to send out a letter to the carriers reminding them of the pooling order. The number of blocks that a service provider should contribute to the pool was not mandated by the Commission. There have been no replies to the data request from Lockheed as of yet. Forecast data is due May 29th. The pooling administrator needs to insure that there is a 6 months supply to rate centers in 847 based on the forecasts from carriers. The number pooling website is www.numberpool.com

The number pooling order also mandates conservation methods for NXX assignment in the other NPAs. Carriers are to open NXX-X blocks one at a time and fill 75% of the numbers in each block before requesting a new code. Technical or customer requirements could necessitate the requesting of a new block. The order also mandated that wireless companies begin pooling no later than March 1999. A question came up as to what would happen if a wireless carrier receieved a federal wavier from the LNP deadline. Ameritech already filed a report, as required by the order, stating that 847 could not be saved from exhaust.

The cost recovery order was released. ILEC can recover costs from customers outside of the top 100 MSAs if they are served by an LNP capable switch. The ILECs can charge other carriers and resellers. The FCC did not distinguish alternative regulation carriers from the rest. It was believed that this was an oversight and Ameritech is looking into that.

Three task forces have been set up to handle open issues.

The state task force is dealing with 911 and other state issues. The analysis task force has 12 wildly varying issues to discuss and there is a separate task force dealing with the ITN porting issue. NANC has to file an report to the FCC by September 12th.

June 25th

July 23rd