Mobile Number Portability Services: XConnect

Over 100 countries today have implemented Mobile Number Portability (MNP). In many countries, over 40% of numbers have been ported. Therefore, knowing whether a number has been ported is a key enabler for advanced traffic routing and delivery solutions for Voice calling, SMS messaging, Rich Communication Services, Voice over LTE, Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging and the communications services of the future. 

Key Benefits

Reduce Termination Costs

Routing communications directly to a terminating operator rather than through intermediaries increases margins.

Service Level Improvements

Routing directly rather than through multiple intermediaries removes interconnection delays, avoids unnecessary business support, improves delivery assurance and leads to a better customer experience.

Enable Sophisticated Routing

Advanced Routing, Rating and Revenue Assurance systems require A number and B-number portability information to implement origin and destination based routing.

Set up a free evaluation

How It Works

XConnect has a dedicated team of number information experts that has created proprietary techniques to ingest data from Telecommunications Authorities, the International Telecoms Union (ITU) and IR.21 data sources which enable us to make the unified data available via a simple, secure, scalable, and real-time query interface using enum, https or SIP. Our pioneering platform provides real time query access to our numbering data from multiple points of presence across the world and enables data owners to securely publish and control their data.

Aggregation

Number Administrators
National Regulators
Carriers & Operators

Cleansing

Detect and correct inaccurate records
Delete irrelevant data

Normalisation

Organise for long term maintainability and accuracy
Structure for scalability and performance

Database

Hybrid NoSQL in memory and SQL
Distributed and synchronised
Highly resilient

Compliance

User policy
Privacy laws and regulations

Access

Multiple PoPs
Virtual local copies
Developer friendly

What is unique about XConnect’s Number Portability Service?

A number portability service requires global coverage, high accuracy through use of authoritative and supported data sources, flexible interfaces and commercial models, as well as carrier grade performance.

XConnect’s NPQ service provides access to global number portability information through a configurable and simple real-time query interface. NPQ uses the most authoritative data sources augmented through a managed partner network of HLR Lookup providers to maximise data quality and application suitability.

Built from the ground up to support the high volume and low latency query requirements of telecommunications carriers.

Offers 24x7 multi-lingual support as standard and our service desk is operated by numbering experts.

Data sourcing experts and singular corporate focus on number information services.

Do you manage your Number Portability internally?

Here's why you should outsource to XConnect

Find out why

Number Portability FAQ's

Yes. XConnect has a HLR Lookup service. However, HLR Lookup is only suited for low volume applications. Latency for HLR Lookup can be very high (typically 300-500ms) and high usage can also result in blocking by mobile networks.

XConnect Number Portability Query (NPQ) only uses HLR Lookup for countries where an authoritative database is not available.
Access to the number lookup service is via query-response api with the queries telephone number provided as an attribute. Enum, http and SIP apis are available.
The majority of the XConnect data is sources from authoritative central databases. Typically this data is 24hours old. In some countries intra-day updates are available. Where authoritative sources are not available, XConnect falls back to HLR Lookup. HLR Lookups provide the most up to date information (minutes old) but is not reliable or fast enough to support high volume applications.
Most customers traffic fall into 3 categories. Firstly, countries where they have huge volumes and direct routing is essential in order to maintain volumes and margins. Secondly, a mixture of countries where volumes are modest but direct routing can introduce some overall system efficiency as well as potential for small gains in margin. Finally, a mixture of low volume countries where direct routing would introduce unnecessary complexity and there isn’t enough volume to negotiate better direct route pricing.
Number Lookup is not always an exact science. It is as important to know when accurate number portability information is available as it is to know when there are issues with data and how these issues can be resolved. Most service will only give you information when they have it available and they wont be accountable for the result they provide. XConnect’s multiple data sources rather than a single source and our operations team proactively monitor data quality on a daily basis.