Local Number Portability Traffic Analysis Calculations

1. Local Number PortabilityTraffic Analysis Calculations ENGR 475 – Telecommunications October 19, 2006 Harding University Jonathan White

2. Outline - LNP • Definition of Local Number Portability • Required by Law • New components in the network • Why have LNP • Wireless and LNP • 911 and LNP

3. Outline – Traffic Analysis • What Traffic Engineering is used for • Busy Hour traffic • A.K. Erlang’s Distributions • Examples of board

4. Local Number Portability • LNP – • Mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. • Telcos had until 2002 to completely comply. • What it is: • Consumers can keep their telephone number and have any provider that will serve them. • Consumers can also keep their telephone number when they move to a new location.

5. Benefits of LNP • More competition drives lower prices and better service. • Telecommunications biggest enemies: • Churn • Fraud • Most people want to keep their telephone numbers. • Why would this be true? • The LNP act gives these people the ability to have competition for their dollars.

6. Wireless LNP • Because of LNP, you can get a local telephone number any where in the US, no matter where you live. • For example, I bought my phone in Bentonville, Arkansas, but I was able to get a local Searcy number. • However, having wireless LNP makes billing even more complex.

7. Additional Network Objects • On the SS7 network, a new database is required to support LNP so that the call is routed across the correct network. • Providers can actually pay to have access to updated LNP databases. • GTE and Cincinnati Bell Information Services • This adds cost and delay to the system. • This database is called the local service management system. • Local SMS.

8. 911 and LNP • The 911 system used to derive location information based on your telephone number. • No longer directly possible. • Your location information is now passed to 911 through database access. • This makes the 911 system less reliable.

9. 911 and Wireless • Cell phone towers are no equipped with GPS units so that they can calculate where your call came from. • If 3 or more towers are within your signal range, they can triangulate your exact location. • But again, LNP means 1 more database dip. • Also, the databases must be maintained.

10. Who Pays • We ultimately pay for local number portability. • Is it worth it?

11. Traffic Analysis • Method for determining the cost effectiveness of various sizes and configurations of networks. • Helps us to decide how many telephone trunks we should use to service organizations. • Formulas were used; now, computer modeling is almost exclusively used.

12. Uses of Traffic Engineering • Utilizing the correct number of links at the best price point. • Cost versus effectiveness • What do you engineer to? • The busiest hour? • The average amount of traffic? • The minimum required that will still retain customers? • How are our road systems engineered?

13. Agner Krarup Erlang • Danish mathematician and engineer. • 1878 – 1929 • Worked for the telephone company in Copenhagen from 1908 to 1929. • Applied math to calculating how many circuits and telephone operators were needed. • His formulas were incredibly good for the time period, and they were used until very recently.

14. Grade of Service • GOS – How many callers will be refused service. • This could be a busy tone or a redirection to voice mail. • Telephone companies have designed their networks so that the probability that a circuit will be blocked must be between 1 and 5 percent. • To get a lower blocking percentage than 1 percent gets exponentially more difficult.

15. Traffic Analysis • Erlang’s ideas are used extensively in: • Data networks • Voice networks • Busy hour traffic on interstates • Banking/Supermarket queuing theory. • General max/min optimization problems

16. Traffic Analysis • The rest is on the board