February 2003
OBF Works on Intercarrier Billing Issues Between Wireless and Wireline Carriers
The ATIS Ordering and Billing Forum is currently addressing the problem that carriers have in determining jurisdiction, for proper billing and taxing, when they terminate calls that originate on wireless and some CLEC networks. This issue involves both local and IXC call detail records (CDRs) that are produced for either a terminating access tandem or an end office switch, and that can be responsible for significant revenues.
Currently, the terminating company cannot properly jurisdictionalize toll calls originated on a wireless network for carrier access billing (CABS) to an IXC because a cellular switch may serve locations in multiple states and/or LATAs. A similar problem exists where a CLEC switch serves multiple states and/or LATAs and this affects reciprocal compensation billing. If calls are incorrectly jurisdictionalized, intercarrier billing will be at the wrong rates.
There is no information in the existing signaling records that the terminating company can use to determine where a wireless call originated. For wireless-originated calls, the calling party number is not sufficient to determine the originating location because that calling party number is assigned from the cellular customer’s home location but the call may be originating from a different location.
The OBF points out that although this is an existing problem with wireless originated calls, the problem will be compounded with the implementation of wireless number portability. When a wireline number is ported to a wireless customer, the jurisdiction of all calls originating from a portable NPA/NXX will become suspect without the availability of a JIP (Jurisdictional Information Parameter) or originating local routing number (LRN) value passed from the originating office. The JIP and originating LRN are currently insufficient to determine the jurisdiction of the call because they are uniquely defined at the switch level.
The OBF adds that when a wireless number is ported into a wireline office, the terminating company will also have a problem identifying the originating service provider for intraLATA calls that are not delivered to the terminating company over a direct connection with the wireless provider.
The OBF proposed to adopt one of two solutions, modifying either the JIP or the originating LRN to contain the necessary information. The T1S1 committee supported the use of the JIP as the right solution. With this solution, the wireless switch would be assigned a unique JIP value for each State/LATA combination that is served by that switch. The JIP would be a “resident NPA/NXX” for one of the originating cell sites and would be unique to the State/LATA for all cell sites that it is assigned.
The proposed solution requires wireless switches to be able to identify the originating jurisdiction (State/LATA) of the call and assign the appropriate JIP value in the signaling. The JIP would be a required field for all cellular originated calls regardless of number portability or pooling. The terminating company should record the JIP and place it in the ORIG LRN field (first 6 digits) of the billing record.
Likewise, a CLEC switch that serves multiple jurisdictions would be assigned a unique JIP for each STATE/LATA that it serves. The CLEC switch would need to be able to determine the originating jurisdiction and assign the appropriate JIP. The JIP must be a required field for all wireline calls from a ported number and all originating calls from a switch that serves multiple jurisdictions.
The terminating company will then be able to determine the true jurisdiction of all such calls by using the STATE and LATA of the JIP as reported in the Local Exchange Routing Guide (LERG). The OBF should be able to finalize the standard soon.
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