One concept worth taking note: Nobody actually owns a DID, they are under control of the FCC and NANPA (in the US) and are assigned to licensed operators (the concept should be fairly consistent in most countries).
As I have stated transparently in my recent previous emails regarding DID providers, I am using primarily Global Crossing and Level3 in the US. They offer, by legal obligation from the FCC, LNP for only 1 dollar a number and from what I understand, it is rather painless. It is for that reason they structure their agreements the way they do, by making money on the simultaneous call capacity rather than the DID itself. Due to the potential exposure to such little customer loyalty, you could in theory, just migrate to another provider who offers you a better deal, and it should be transparent to your end-user customer. Regarding the pricing, in North America I think anything over $1/DID/Mo. should be considered expensive. I am paying considerably less than that. My bet is within the next 2 years, DIDs will be given away to customers who purchase other core services from the Tier I carriers as a 'silver lining'. You have to remember, that their business is capacity and traffic and the numbers don't cost them anything, since they are assigned by the regulatory bodies. Where they incur costs is in administrative and in the network itself, which is their primary interest in selling. if I nice DID offering helps bring you on board as a significant broadband consumer, that's what they want. Even today, they are not making any money worth talking about on the DID business itself, but rather the VoIP Inbound Origination. Regards, Michael _____ From: Blake Medulan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 10:08 To: TAUG Subject: [on-asterisk] number ownership Been doing a lot of research but could use some pointing in the right direction. Who actually owns phone numbers/DIDs? I've read of only one VOIP service that offers number portability when uses leave the system due mainly to fact that 99% of supplies are leasing the numbers from telecos and can't offer the consumer any sort of ownership. Even the brokerage systems that I've seen only offer leasing of numbers (often for about 3-5 dollars a month) Some links would be nice B
