Local number portability is nothing new, but it may be news to VoIP providers that they can significantly lower their internal costs by doing number portability correction – which could be considered a form of least-cost routing.

Local number portability refers to the concept that a telephone customer can keep his or her telephone number when he or she switches service providers. LNP was mandated by the 1996 Telecom Act. Specifically, the FCC (News - Alert) requires that the next to last network (N-1) before the final local exchange carrier serving the called party must perform an LNP database dip.

If a local exchange carrier receives a call for a dialed telephone number that is assigned to them in the local exchange routing guide (the routing table for the North American telephone network), but has been ported away to another service provider, the LEC can charge the originating network a very high charge for the misrouted call.

 “When a customer takes the number to a new service provider, that telephone number is associated with the local routing number, or LRN, of the new service provider,” says Jim Dalton,  CEO of TransNexus (News - Alert) Inc. “Routing based on the dialed telephone number is wrong when a number has been ported to a new service provider. This routing error is an expensive error for VoIP providers, who would save significant costs if they routed the call correctly using the LRN.”

According to Dalton, portability correction can lower a VoIP provider’s termination costs by 4 percent to 15 percent.

TransNexus is a software company focused on providing solutions to next-generation networks for least-cost routing, number portability, traffic reports, profit analysis and wholesale billing. The company says its NexOSS Least Cost Routing features are easy to use and can do copy and paste rate provisioning from carrier rate plans; support for up to 100,000,000 different VoIP routes; offer least-cost routing based on inter-state rates, intra-state rates and customized local calling areas; and include conversion of rate plans based on LATAs, OCNs and Tiers into a routing table and rate plans based on NPA (News - Alert)-NXX-X breakouts.