Carrier ID

The Challenge

Phone numbers are no longer just random sequences of digits used by Communication Service Providers (CSPs) and messaging providers to route calls and SMS messages. Mobile-first apps like WhatsApp contributed to making these numbers 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 this world, continuing to route 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 Global Data Services 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 comes with unique regulations, commercial agreements and technical requirements. netnumber Global Data Services began integrating these data sets into a single service more than  20 years ago, enabling fast, reliable access to number portability data across the globe.

Many data sources are stored in netnumber data centers, either close to the customers’ locations in AWS or on a customer’s premises. Our Carrier ID service 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.

Key Features

Use Cases

Least-Cost Routing

netnumber Global Data Services enables multiple CSPs, CPaaS providers and messaging hubs to route their SMS, MMS and voice traffic accurately and cost-effectively. These companies can access the data directly from the netnumber Cloud, via an AWS deployment or as an onsite service. Number portability data from over 90+ countries is complemented by global code range data, making it simple and quick to identify any mobile or landline operator globally. This feeds the routing engine and helps select the best route to use for each message and for each voice call.

Service Routing (Messaging / Voice)

Some services rely on knowing the phone number type (mobile or landline). Such an example is user registration or two-factor authentication, where the one-time password can be delivered either as text via SMS or as text-to-speech via an IVR call. Carrier ID identifies the phone number type and is therefore a useful tool for such use cases.

Fraud Prevention

Risk scoring of telephone numbers is essential for fraud prevention purposes. Different data points give useful information about the risk associated with certain actions, for example a service sign-up attempt or a financial transaction. Carrier ID helps determine the carrier associated with each telephone number. Fraud prevention algorithms can then attach a higher risk to prepaid numbers — which are typically easier to activate than postpaid numbers in many countries and therefore may be attractive to fraudsters — or phone numbers belonging to carriers which are known to have weaker security practices.

Benefits

• Increases the success rate of SMS and voice calls
• Reduces the latency of SMS delivery and voice call setup
• Accurate low-cost routing saves SMS and voice termination cost
• One contract, one connection and one unified format for data access in all 90+ countries with number portability implemented
• Managed service saves setup, capital and operational cost