Fraud & Identity Featured Article

Telcordia Technologies Chile Touts Milestone

By Maurice Nagle Web Editor

Number portability is certainly not a term that comes up often during dinner conversation, but maybe it should.  A phone number is far more than a string of digits – it is an identity.  So, when transitioning between fixed and mobile numbers, it’s nice to add a bit more continuity to the process.

This week, iconectiv (News - Alert) subsidiary Telcordia Technologies Chile S.A. announced a major milestone. In 2011, the firm introduced a number porting program that recently surpassed 11 million successfully ported phone numbers.

“When you consider that there are just 18 million residents of Chile, porting more than 11 million numbers in the past six years is a credit to the ease, efficiency and convenience of the services provided by Telcordia (News - Alert) Technologies Chile S.A.,” said Rodrigo Ramirez, undersecretary of telecommunications at SUBTEL, Chile’s regulatory body of telecommunications. “Number portability has become a powerful tool for our citizens especially as the demand for higher quality services increases.”

At the time of the program’s launch, the Number Portability Committee granted the iconectiv subsidiary exclusive number portability rights for all Chilean service providers. Due to the large amount of success of the initiative, recently Telcordia Technologies Chile was able to renew this privilege for an additional five years.

Chile is a one of the few countries in the world that allows full portability, which is the ability for subscribers to reassign phone numbers between mobile and fixed lines within a 24-hour window.

“A person’s phone number has become a key identity for individuals as well as businesses large and small, so maintaining that connection when moving to another service provider is critical,” said David Wilson, Vice President, Global Sales, iconectiv.

SUBTEL is one service provider in particular that embraced this program from the start, and continues to spearhead the growing amount of numbers ported with innovation and special offers.

Life is filled with change. But not every change requires challenge and complexity.