About Local & Mobile Number Portability (LMNP)
Local and mobile number portability (LMNP) gives consumers and businesses the ability to keep their existing local or mobile phone number if they change telecommunications providers.
LMNP is the foremost achievement in 2007 for the TCF, its members, the telecommunications industry as a whole, and for New Zealand’s consumers. LMNP also represents a significant milestone in New Zealand’s domestic competition landscape.
Launched on schedule on 1 April 2007, LMNP was the culmination of three years of intensive work by the telecommunications industry at a cost of approximately $100 million. The complexity of the project required an unprecedented level of industry cooperation and commitment, requiring changes to networks and billing systems, as well as the creation of the Industry Portability Management System (IPMS), a centralised industry system to manage the porting process.
The successful introduction of LMNP was not just a technical achievement for industry members, but has promoted healthy competition among telecommunications companies.
By reducing the barriers to changing telecommunications suppliers, the industry has empowered consumers and businesses to choose the service provider that best meets their needs.
LMNP is an overall project comprising of two sets of terms and conditions, the LMNP Terms and the Network Terms. Therefore, for a party to deliver an LMNP solution in compliance with the Commission’s Number Portability Determination, the solution will have to comply with both the LMNP Terms and the Network Terms. |
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Organisations like Auckland Grammar School are already realising LMNP’s benefits. Patrick Gargiulo, Head of Operations at Auckland Grammar, said: “Number portability allowed us to make significant savings on our telecommunications spend on phone and internet usage while minimising the risks of changing service providers.” |
Architecture for LMNP
The diagram shows the architecture that has been designed to allow Service Providers and Carriers to port numbers between them. The diagram also shows a third party organisation that needs to obtain information on numbers that have been ported.
This determination sets out the formula for allocating the cost of delivering the Number Portability Services between the access seekers and all access providers of the service, the functions that must be performed by a system for delivering the Number Portability Services and the standard to which those functions must be performed.
The Number Portability Determination consists of:
- Decision 554 dated 31 August 2005
- Decision 579 dated 17 May 2006 (Clarification 1)
- Decision 600 dated 30 March 2007 (Clarification 2)
- Decision 605 dated 22 June 2007 (Clarification 3)
- Decision 612 dated 20 December 2007 (Clarification 4)
- Decision 684 dated 27 November 2009 (Clarification 5)
- LMNP Operations & Support Manual dated Dec 2009
The LMNP Terms and Network Terms form part of Decision 554, as amended by subsequent determinations.
The LMNP Operations & Support manual is intended to provide detailed procedures for operational implementation and management of Porting Processes and multi-lateral issues that Service Providers and Carriers will need to implement. The procedures outlined in the LMNP Operations & Support manual support the processes defined in the LMNP Terms and the Network Terms.
The Manual applies to all parties to the Number Portability Determination in relation to either of the designated multi-network services, local telephone number portability service or cellular telephone number portability service.
LMNP Terms
The purpose of the LMNP Terms is to provide for the business requirements for LMNP. The LMNP Terms detail the processes that enable end-users to port their Numbers and set out the rights and obligations of parties to these terms in a number portability environment. These processes are based around an Industry Portability Management System (IPMS) which facilitates number portability between service providers and carriers but relies on carriers to configure and update their networks and support systems to ensure calls to and from ported numbers are correctly routed.
Network Terms
The Network Terms set out what is required of participating carriers in the development of their own network solutions and specify the optional and mandatory requirements necessary between networks for Local and Mobile Number Portability.
Date of Implementation
The Industry Portability Management System went live as scheduled on 1 April 2007, bringing local and mobile number portability (LMNP) to customers.
Project Scope
The role of the working party has changed following the successful delivery of LMNP and is set out in the Number Portability Project Scope.