[LINK] Ported telephone numbers

[David]

On Wednesday, 10 January 2018 2:34:20 PM AEDT Paul Brooks wrote:

> All of these [voice transport protocols] are part of the PSTN, and the traditional telephone number addressing is the Universal Voice Glue that makes it all work together relatively seamlessly, and lets someone on a POTS line call someone on IP line without having to be aware of what technology the receiver is using at that moment. Not quite irrelevant!.

However IP-based voice connections will be in a huge majority when the NBN finishes its rollout, probably enough to warrant a strategic rethink.  Call routing based on POTS number, as currently done by the carriers, logically duplicates a function which could, in principle, be done by the IP (i.e. NBN) network.  Surely it should be possible to integrate the IP and remaining POTS networks so the whole system is more efficient and way less cumbersome.


>> I see, I'd assumed the mandatory requirement to publish a PLNR ("Ported Local Number Register") file was intended to allow all carriers to route calls directly to the carrier currently holding a ported number without going through the donor carrier.  But the whole idea might be suffering scability problems now.
> 
> That is the idea - but also, even interconnect arrangements are bilateral as well.  'Your' carrier may not even have a bilateral network interconnect directly with the final destination network hosting the number, and may have to route the call through a third network who will provide the transit connectivity (who might or might not be the original donor carrier) - who will do a second lookup of the PLNR in the process to work out which direction to forward the call to.

Out of interest I downloaded the full "EnhancedFullDownload.csv" file (81.4 Mbytes!) from
https://www.thenumberingsystem.com.au/#/number-register/search  This shows the allocated and current holders of the entire POTS numbering range, but at a quick look I couldn't see any individual numbers, just ranges.

It's all something of a mystery, I suppose there's probably a degree of ad-hocery going on...

David L.