Network renovation: Lucent provides Bell Atlantic with portability

Bell Atlantic North is capitalizing on its investments in network operations systems from Lucent Technologies to provide local number portability and improved surveillance and traffic control functions.

The decision of the carrier, which was Nynex before its merger with Bell Atlantic, will enable the company to have a number portability solution in place quickly and with minimal risk, according to Ara Puntungian, director of operations service planning at Bell Atlantic North.

"We have a large legacy embedded base of Lucent management products and a large number of deployed systems," Puntungian said. "To look at anything else right now for [number portability] would be a risky and costly proposition."

The software enhancements the carrier will add under the $35 million agreement will upgrade its network management capabilities and its ability to quickly access databases. In addition to Lucent's testing and surveillance software, Bell Atlantic North also will gain the use of Lucent's NetMinder network traffic performance software.

NetMinder's network traffic management module provides traffic surveillance and control capabilities and monitors the real-time traffic loads and the health of circuit groups. The system's network trouble patterning module provides the network monitoring and analysis tools necessary to ensure call completion, particularly as new number portability functions are introduced into networks.

"Call processing with [number portability] will be fundamentally different than it is now," said Steve Izzo, solutions manager for local number portability at Lucent. "The circuit-switched network is no longer going to be a shock absorber for traffic. Instead, the bottlenecks will occur where the [number portability] databases are accessed. By refining the way Bell Atlantic North accesses data for every call, we can make sure those calls actually get through."

Although the advent of number portability is required by the Federal Communications Commission, the management software needed to put it in place will allow carriers to offer new services as well, Izzo said.

"Number portability will also mean location portability, meaning a customer can move and not change carriers and keep his current number," Izzo said.