Nearly half of the telephone calls made in the United States are done through ported telephone numbers. Such a routing system causes 40 percent of those dialed telephone numbers to be misrouted, created a breakdown in quality of service. The problem continues as the share of ported numbers increases. VoIP service providers would benefit significantly from a least cost routing system that prevents failed calls, which increases termination fees up to 25 percent.

Routing telephone calls by their routing number and not the dialed number has alleviated the basis of the problem, but leaves added expenses and dependency on an unreliable network source. By using least cost routing, operators can rely on a more unified solution that is already well established. Existing systems rely on SIP service providers ensure a number portability query is sent to an external database.

OSPrey-NP is designed to be a specific software package for hosting the U.S. Number portability database. Since 2000, the OSPrey platform has been successful in carrier operations. Using that same technology for least cost routing, a specialized version called OSPrey-NP was developed. It is based on years of proven carrier grade reliability and performance.

OSPrey-NP is positioned to provide the most efficient software platform to utilize the national database while working within the operator’s local network. This creates the most optimal least cost routing possible. The server automatically synchronizes with the U.S. Number Portability Administration Center, NPAC. By doing so, OSPrey-NP guarantees the network has a near real- time copy of the NPAC.

With carrier-grade performance, the OSPrey-NP system allows least cost routing by locally hosting the NPAC on their own network which lowers operating risks and allows for faster queries. It also gives the opportunity for continuous and automatic updates to be received from near real-time number portability data.

With the implementation of a more reliable system, which is easy to install and use, providers will be able to increase revenue. OSPrey-NP supports SIP and OSP protocol, including a control system and records queries accessible by customers with optional billing packages. Using a least cost routing system improves the certified interoperability with GSMA (News - Alert) Pathfinder international number portability service as well.

In order to operate the most advanced version for least cost routing, providers will need to have Red Hat (News - Alert) Enterprise Server V5 or Centos V5.4 with portal requirements of 1080, 1081, 1082, 1101, 1102 and 5060. Host servers must have 32 GB of RAM in order to host all eight NPAC regions.