WASHINGTON-Sprint Corp. was forced last month to clarify its position on the use of number pooling as a way to preserve telephone numbers after many in the wireless industry believed its position changed to favor number pooling for all industries.
The wireless industry contends number pooling and wireless local number portability are technically difficult and have resisted implementing them. The FCC has given the wireless industry a reprieve from implementing LNP until 2002.
Number pooling is expected to take longer to implement than LNP, so the industry was surprised when Andrew Sukawaty, president of Sprint PCS, said publicly the FCC should establish national standards for 1,000-block pooling. Sukawaty went on to say there was a consensus that pooling should be established for LNP-capable carriers.
This was seen by many in the wireless industry as a policy reversal because Sprint PCS had been a leader in the anti-portability movement.
Not so, said Sprint PCS’ Jonathan Chambers. Sprint’s position is carriers that are able to port numbers (i.e. landline carriers) should be required to pool numbers, Chambers said. Sprint Corp. believes this will increase the amount of numbers available-even without wireless participation-because wireless carriers generally use numbers more efficiently. In its reply comments, filed jointly with its PCS unit, Sprint cites its use of numbers in the Denver area.
In the Denver case, Sprint noted that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission reduced the number of rate centers so wireline carriers would not have to request as many numbers, but the impact on Sprint was minimal because it does not allocate numbers based on rate centers.
“CMRS providers, even without participating in pooling, still require fewer numbering resources to cover the same geographic area than landline carriers participating in pooling … and also unlike carriers committed to a rate-center paradigm, a CMRS provider can assign numbers in a growth code to a customer located anywhere in a metropolitan area-as opposed to limiting use of the 10,000 numbers to a single rate center,” said Sprint.
Number pooling has been a hot topic lately, with the FCC suggesting its use in proposed number preservation rules and various state regulatory bodies requesting power from the FCC to implement number pooling in their states.
The telecom industry has resisted giving states special powers for number pooling because that would dilute the impact of a nationwide numbering system.
“The alternative to the adoption of nationwide numbering conservation solutions is a `patchwork’ of individualized, local measures that would subject carriers to inconsistent state numbering administration regimes and impermissibly compromise the [FCC’s] exclusive jurisdiction over the North American Numbering Plan for the United States,” said the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Just prior to leaving for the August recess, Congress also got into the act when Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) attempted to amend the FCC spending bill to allow states to implement number pooling. However, the measure failed 169-256.
