IP: more on FCC to vote on phone-number crunch

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: johnl () iecc com (John R. Levine)
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA
Newsgroups: iecc.lists.ip
Date: 30 Mar 2002 02:28:48 -0500
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Re: IP: FCC to vote on phone-number crunch

[A CNET article said]
> Cell phones, fax machines and pagers are dialing through the
> country's supply of phone numbers.

I wish we could stamp out this oft-repeated but incorrect
explanation of the phone number shortage.

The main reason we're running out of phone numbers is the way that
competitive local phone service currently works.  Every time a new
local phone company (CLEC) sets up, it needs an entire 10,000 number
prefix in every "rate center" where it hopes to sign up customers.  As
a fairly typical example, the small city of Ithaca NY has a total of
39 prefixes assigned.  Of those, 13 are for Verizon, the incumbent
local company (ILEC), 11 are for mobile and paging, and 15 are for
various CLECs.  None of the CLECs are doing particulary well, and I'd
be surprised if they have 10,000 numbers altogether in use of the
150,000 they have assigned.

There are two and a half straightforward changes that will alleviate
the number crunch.  The half is thousand allocation, that is, hand out
numbers to CLECs 1000 at a time rather than 10,000, which they're
already doing in many places.

The first major change is full local number portability, that is, make
it possible for any ILEC or CLEC to handle any phone number.  The way
that portability is being implemented, a CLEC need get only a single
prefix in a LATA (regional service area) and it can then handle
customers from any rate center in the LATA.  Around here that means
that each CLEC would need one prefix in Syracuse, where all their
switches are, and could then give back dozens of their nearly unused
prefixes everywhere else, using a handful of numbers ported from
Verizon to serve their customers.  This is what the customers want
anyway, to keep their existing Verizon numbers when they switch phone
companies.

The other change, which offers greater number savings but is hardly
being addressed at all, is rate center consolidation.  The map of
telephone rate centers is a historical hodge-podge that in most places
dates from the locations of manual operator offices in the 1930s and
has nothing to do with the current network topology, nor does it bear
any relationship to the actual cost of carrying a call.  As an
egregious example, if I call someone in the next town up the road from
here, it's a toll call, even though my town and that town use the same
physical phone switch!  (The call goes out of our switch, up 75 miles
to Syracuse to Verizon's toll switch, then 75 miles back to here, just
so Verizon can put it on my bill at the end of the month.)  Most rate
centers are tiny, e.g., there are eight within the city of Boston
alone.  ILECs like tiny rate centers, since the more rate centers, the
more highly profitable short-distance toll calls they can charge for.

If Boston and its suburbs were consolidated into one rate center
rather than the dozens they have now, the CLECs could give back vast
numbers of nearly empty prefixes since even without portability,
they'd only need one prefix for the rate center rather than several
dozen now.  The only place I'm aware of significant consolidation is
Colorado, where Denver and its suburbs were consolidated some years
ago.  For reasons I don't entirely fathom, the other state regulators
either don't understand the compelling arguments for consolidation, or
don't have the spine to stand up to the ILECs who want their bogus
toll revenue.

Moving from 10 to 12 digit phone numbers will, as the article noted,
be a nightmare on the scale of Y2K or perhaps worse since there aren't
band-aids analogous to "set the clock back and fake it".  With full
portability and aggressive consolidation, we can make the current
stock of phone numbers last many decades into the future.  I hope we
do it.


-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl () iecc com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner,
http://iecc.com/johnl,
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail


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