The Challenge: Routing

Phone numbers are no longer just random sequences of digits used by Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and messaging providers to route voice calls and text messages. Mobile-first apps like WhatsApp contributed to making them a part of the identity of their users. This means that more and more subscribers will keep their number when switching their phone provider. Combine this with the fierce competition between CSPs, especially in markets with a very high penetration of prepaid SIM cards, and you can end up with number portability rates that can exceed 50%.

In today’s world, continuing to route voice calls and text messages by number prefix leads to unsuccessful transactions and lost money. Only those CSPs who use the most up-to-date number portability data can accurately terminate their voice calls and SMS messages, thus ensuring that they continue to properly run their low-cost routing engine.

The netnumber Solution

Getting access to high-quality number portability data is easier said than done. Over 90 countries have mandated the implementation of number portability, and each country has its own unique regulations, commercial agreements and technical requirements. 

More than 20 years ago, netnumber began integrating all these data sets into a single service, enabling fast, reliable access to number portability data across the globe. Today, Carrier ID provides accurate responses to the principal questions of routing decisions:

• “Should this message/call be routed at all?” or “Is this phone number valid?”
• “Where must I route this message/call?” or “What is the current network/service provider?”

This is accomplished due to Carrier ID’s ability to validate the format and meticulously resolve the current telecommunications service provider for any given phone number globally. For

that purpose, netnumber onboards code range, number portability, mobile operator, and 3rd party data sets. netnumber also combines and harmonizes disparate datasets for convenient consumption. 

Many data sources are stored in netnumber data centers, either close to the customers’ location in AWS or on a customer’s premises. netnumber ’s Carrier ID platform delivers the fastest response times in the industry.

Given a phone number, Carrier ID will return a comprehensive set of related data elements needed to enable customers to determine various properties of the respective phone number and to map that information to their own carrier data set.