Number Portability for Telecommunication Networks

Number portability is a telecommunication network function, which allows subscribers to switch services, service providers, or locations without changing their telephone numbers. Near-term number portability is typically implemented by existing telecommunication services such as remote call forwarding. Long-term number portability can be implemented under the advanced intelligent network platform. In this article we introduce the number portability issues and provide a tutorial on AIN. Then we show the AIN implementation for long-term number portability. Finally, a cache approach is proposed to speed up address transfer, which can effectively reduce the network overhead incurred by AIN query for number portability.