Automated Mobile Number Portability Software to Comply with Latest Telecom Regulations

About Our Client

The Client is a European IT consulting and software development company offering telecom applications and services to both domestic and international players, such as fixed-line and mobile carriers, MVNOs, ISPs, WISPs, VoIP services providers, and others.

Challenge

In 2002, one of the EU’s new directives urged telecom operators to ensure that mobile users could keep their telephone number when switching to another service provider. The directive was to level the competition among telecom operators and thus help users benefit from this competition. However, without a central database achieving the intended results required from service providers a lot of manual routine. Sometimes, porting a mobile number could take even up to 2 months. Together with the Client, ScienceSoft was commissioned to create an automatic Mobile Number Portability (MNP) system that would enable users to change operators without delay.

Solution

In the course of the project, ScienceSoft's mobile development team created the core business logic of the application, integrated it with a number of external systems (billing, database and more), and performed full-cycle testing to ensure a seamless system performance. Thanks to a centralized database, service providers can now easily exchange user information. The system supports two types of mobile number porting: inbound and outbound. A typical inbound porting process comprises the following steps:

• User contacts Customer Service and provides their personal data. Customer Service representatives validate the data and check whether the user has positive credit balance.
• User chooses a product, namely a price plan, additional services and others.
• Porting begins with verifying that the number is unique and eligible according to the external systems.
• A user account is created in the billing system.
• The number is activated in the new telecom network.

Results

The project was finished successfully. Thousands of users have been able to easily switch service providers without the need to change their number. ScienceSoft went on to help the Client to support and improve the system.

Technologies and Tools

Languages: Java, Perl, HTML, DHTML

Apache: Tomcat 5.0, HTTP Server, Subversion 1.2.3, Ant 1.6.5, log4j 1.2.12

Other: Oracle 9i, J2EE (Java Servlet, Web Services), JUnit, Spring, Hibernate, Mason, TOAD 7.3