Colt : Number Porting process for resellers in Germany

Colt has a long history and strong expertise supplying full regulatory compliance in all countries where we operate. Regulatory rules are different in all countries and we support local laws, industry standards and regulations of all relevant aspects, such as emergency call routing and number porting - just to name two examples.

Number porting is an important product feature of our Voice and VoIP based products, such as Voice Line, VoIP Access and Number Hosting. We are supporting a new process option in Germany that allows resellers to manage number porting processes with the releasing operators on their own. This option increases our wholesale customers' flexibility to apply their preferred business and operational models, which can be the following:

a) Resellers port their numbers via Colt - as per the existing process
This is the standard case which is well-known by our customers: We manage the full number porting process end-to-end for our resellers - including porting coordination with the other operators, activation of customer numbers at the exact confirmed time - and we also do fault management in case of porting errors.

b) Resellers coordinate their number porting themselves
In this case the resellers are responsible for the first step of any porting: The coordination with the other involved operators, which can be done via the electronic WBCI interface or by fax. The reseller will then inform us about the porting date and Colt will do the technical porting part at the requested time. Note that in this case also the fault management is done by the reseller as they are fully responsible to manage the contact to the other operators.

Which route to go as a reseller?
Recent discussions with our German resellers show that most smaller and medium sized resellers prefer to let Colt manage their number porting for two reasons: On one hand it is of real added value for them that we can deliver the full end-to-end process including fault management - and on the other hand they save investment in new processes, systems and staff.
A number of our bigger resellers have implemented their own porting coordination processes and systems - as their high volume of number porting justifies the investment. In both cases there is one partner to deal with - Colt.

Are there any implications on our international resellers and service providers?
No. For our multi-national customers we typically manage the porting processes end-to-end in Germany - just as we do in other countries - and we will continue to do so.
For example: As part of our Number Hosting solution we enable our customers to simply reserve, activate or port geographic numbers for their end-customers via our electronic B2B interface Cocom. This major benefit of the Colt solution is greatly appreciated by our customers, and we will continue to offer it without any change.

Please let us know if you want to change your number porting process model as shown above - we will be glad to support you with it. If you want to know more how we can support you with number portability in your country, please contact your Colt account manager or send an e-mail to our Service Provider Solutions team. We will be happy to discuss your requirements with you.