Everybody into the pool

Virginia last week became the latest state to award a bid for an interim number pooling administrator in what has become a state-by-state electoral college-like horse race between Telcordia Technologies and NeuStar to become the national administrator.

The Virginia State Corporation Commission gave Telcordia its fifth state contract for conducting a thousands-block number pooling trial. NeuStar currently administers trials in 13 states. The FCC has granted authority to about 25 states to begin number pooling trials. California is the only state so far to use both companies as administrators for different area codes.

The FCC began mandating state-sponsored number pooling with Ameritech in June 1999 as one of several approved measures to improve number resource optimization. By late spring or early summer, the FCC will designate a national administrator for thousands-block number pooling.

When a national administrator is finally selected, all current state number pooling administrative functions will revert to the designee.

Most of the remaining authorized states have sent out requests for proposals or are in the process of doing so. Others have submitted applications to the FCC to show the pending exhaustion of numbers due to the current practice of 10,000-block number pooling.

Those states that haven't submitted requests may want to hurry things along. “Once we get the national administrator, which is imminent, the state applications in the process will be moot,” the FCC spokesman said.

Why go through a number pooling trial with an interim administrator only to have to convert to a national process in the summer? “Under the federal roll-out schedule, some states wouldn't qualify [for pooling] until the top 100 [metropolitan statistical areas] have been turned up,” said Barry Bishop, director of numbering services at NeuStar.

Vendors have their own incentive. “Thousands-block number pooling is strategically important to Telcordia and our parent company SAIC. We feel it would be a good business for us, but we also feel that number resource optimization is important to the industry and goes far beyond [being] a moneymaker,” said Adam Newman, director of number pooling for Telcordia.

Potential administrators are constrained by the industry numbering committee's pooling assignment guidelines; therefore, the implementations must be similar enough to convert to whichever national administrator is chosen. The fact that only two players have emerged from the process indicates that the challenge is significant. However, the competitors do bring their own strengths to the table.

“The system we have developed for performing interim number pooling implementation is the only system that does online validation of all the forms used for pooling administration. It allows us and service providers to be more efficient. And it all comes down to how those guidelines are applied,” Newman said.

While Telcordia has picked up momentum lately, NeuStar's head start and early involvement have given it the lead in the number of states and area codes in which it serves as interim administrator.

“All the industry numbering guidelines are based on the work we did with the industry in Illinois and New York. We have worked with both the regulators and the service providers for three years. Experience is our key driver,” Bishop said.

NeuStar also recently released its Pooling Assessment Tool that uses adjustable algorithms. State regulators can adjust certain fields in the tool to forecast the effect number pooling would have on a particular area code. “It also gives [carriers] some idea which area code gives them more bang for the buck,” Bishop said.