Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-foster-e164-gstn-np-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 08:22:10 -0500

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: Number Portability in the GSTN: An Overview
	Author(s)	: M. Foster, J. Yu, T. McGarry
	Filename	: draft-foster-e164-gstn-np-00.txt
	Pages		: 28
	Date		: 16-Mar-00
	
This document provides an overview of E.164 telephone number 
portability (NP) in the Global Switched Telephone Network (GSTN).  
There are three types of number portability: service provider 
portability (SPNP), location portability, and service portability.  
Service provider portability, the focus of the present draft, is a 
regulatory imperative in many countries seeking to liberalize local 
telephony service competition, by enabling end-users to retain pre-
existing telephone numbers while changing service providers.  
Implementation of NP within national GSTN entails potentially 
significant changes to numbering administration, network element 
signaling, call routing and processing, billing, service management, 
and other functions.  NP changes the fundamental nature of a dialed 
E.164 number from a hierarchical physical routing address to a 
virtual address, thereby requiring the transparent translation of 
the later to the former.  In addition, there are various regulatory 
constraints which establish relevant parameters for NP 
implementation, most of which are not network technology specific.  
Consequently, the implementation of NP behavior consistent with 
applicable regulatory constraints, as well as the need for 
interoperation with the existing GSTN NP implementations, are  
relevant topics for numerous areas of IP telephony work-in-progress 
at IETF.

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