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Least Cost Routing Considerations for Toll Free Numbers

With constant and growing cost pressures on their business, Toll Free providers can no longer rely on slow, manual, ad hoc techniques to analyze and deploy least cost call routing.

Many Toll Free service providers sign agreements with multiple carriers to carry call traffic on that carriers’ network for Toll Free Numbers in areas where the provider has no service or can find a better rate than using their own network. In order to take advantage of such agreements, your company must generate Call Processing Records (CPRs) for your Toll Free numbers that use a specific set of carriers based on where the call originated. The initial CPR that must be created may seem obvious or trivial (use the lowest cost provider for each NPA-NXX), but SMS/800™ restrictions on the size and number of paths in a CPR often prevents the simple choice and requires a more complex routing record.

Inefficiencies in implementing least cost routing translations and CPR updates can cause providers to unnecessarily sacrifice time, money, network performance, and business opportunities by:

• Unsuccessfully implementing new call routing in response to rate changes
• Failing to take advantage of price disparities or to apply discounts
• Losing focus on the cost reduction opportunities while implementing "home-grown" IT solutions for Least Cost Routing (screen-scraping, spreadsheets, etc.)

A successful Toll Free Least Cost Routing Tool:

• Produces CPRs with a number of paths and a size that will be accepted by SMS/800™ and can be loaded successfully in their Service Control Points;
• Chooses between multiple carriers for any NPA-NXX;
• Allows you to merge traffic data across multiple toll free numbers to generate a single least cost routing CPR for that set of number

Once the analysis is done and the LCR CPR generated, many benefits exist:

• Agreements with carriers can be renegotiated for example, to provide a volume discount based on the call volume that will be sent to that carrier
• “What-if” scenarios can be done to determine which carrier negotiations would minimize costs
• LCR CPRs could be quickly regenerated as traffic changes on a toll free number.

Successfully implementing Toll Free Least Cost routing can be very challenging. Manual, ad-hoc solutions are not the correct answer. Automation is required! The benefits of successful automation efforts will definitely impact your bottom line!

Matthew J. Noreen PMP® works for csf Corporation supporting and promoting their flagship 8MS® product. 8MS was designed from the ground up by a team of former Bell Labs engineers to be a superior toll free provisioning system that eliminates traditional dependence on SMS/800.

Mr. Noreen has twenty one years of Information Technology experience focused on project management, systems development management, systems functional support, and integrated system environments, with particular emphasis on telecommunications systems implementation and software testing. Mr. Noreen is also experienced in system requirements and business process improvements (CMM Level 2/3) within systems development.

More information at http://www.8msweb.com

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