The management of numbers could potentially pose one of the biggest back-end problems for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Not only the new number issuance and their assignment, management of number inventory and integration to billing and administration a tedious process, transfer of numbers between packages and also between operators (thanks to mobile number portability) and number recyling are creating bigger challenges among MNOs whose subscribers are touching tens of millions and rapidly increasing.
Neustar presented a case study on the impact of the number issue and how intelligent solutions can address and enhance overall backend management of the network.
Case Study
This large wireless operator manages more than 85 million numbers across different services, technologies and regions and has over 50 million subscribers. With high levels of competition, the company differentiates itself on the high levels of service it provides its customers.
The Challenge
This wireless operator was upgrading its network to offer new revenue generating, value added services to customers. Numbering resources were distributed across a number of disparate billing systems, requiring a large administration team to manage the assignment, tracking, recycling and forecasting of the company’s number inventory. These planned network changes and overall growth in demand for new numbers made it the ideal time to review number management processes and systems.
Provisioning:
Numbering data stored in separate systems; customer upgrades would require manually moving numbers between systems.
Utilization Reporting: Twice-yearly utilization reporting, required by regulators, took thousands of hours to prepare; data was pulled from multiple systems, manually consolidated and rechecked for accuracy.
Number Portability: They needed to ensure upgrading customers could retain their telephone numbers. For a full view of inventory, they needed to track port-ins and port-outs.
The Solution
• Single point of management for over 85 million numbers
• Integrated multiple billing, provisioning and ordering systems
• Eliminated duplicate number assignments
• Reduced data fallout to near zero
• Reduced semi-annual number utilization reporting to 40 hours
• Fully automated regulatory reporting ensures compliance.
