i3forum Unveils Free Numbering Plan Community Platform

i3forum, an industry association focused on driving global collaboration and innovation within the international communications sector, is proud to announce the launch of its Numbering Plan Community Platform.

After completing successful user trials over many months, recruiting 10+ participating carrier and vendor members along the way, i3forum is now inviting the industry at large to join the collaborative initiative and share best practices and insights on Numbering Plans.

Numbering plans are vital in telecommunications as they provide a standardized framework for addressing, routing, and identifying communications within and across networks. Many of the industry’s shortcomings are rooted in the imperfect knowledge of Numbering Plans. At no given time is there a single source that has granular, up-to-date, operationally relevant knowledge of the Numbering Plan for each country or market. And whatever knowledge anyone does have, it almost always differs from the knowledge of other industry partners or sources.

Updates and changes also take too long to propagate with authoritative sources and information is often unclear or inaccessible. This has created multiple issues, ranging from fraud, disputes, and under-optimization of routing and pricing to unintentionally enabling unwanted and illegal communications.

“To fix these issues, we’ve created a platform to be the place to go to exchange numbering plan updates and collaborate with experts from around the world. We’re launching something extremely innovative that has never been done before: a Numbering Plan community where experts across the industry can exchange information and key insights into numbering plan interpretations, sources (both authoritative and non-authoritative), commercial applications, fraud trends, and more,” said Philippe Millet, Founder and Chair of i3forum and chair of the Numbering Workgroup.

“The platform is not a central database capturing global numbering plans. It complements what vendors are doing in terms of building reference databases. Monthly calls are also held by the Numbering Workgroup for the community to engage with one another and openly talk about issues or share timely, accurate numbering plan data and expertise with industry peers. Participation leads to shared industry views on critical issues and the exchange of important numbering plan updates and data. Addressing the problems we face requires a collaborative approach with regular review and adaptation of numbering plans to overcome these challenges and support the efficient and optimal functioning of telecommunications.”

Traditional members include both professionals directly managing their company’s global numbering plan and those applying it to their respective business functions (e.g., routing, pricing, billing, fraud prevention, and market management).

“The Numbering Plan Community is a collaborative space to exchange valuable numbering plan insights with the industry. We can easily share our own numbering plan expertise and in turn, get timely news & updates from our peers. These fresh insights can help us to better optimize our A-Z offers to the benefit of our business and our customers," said Jamie Fisher, Destination and Carrier Account Manager at Telstra.

The news follows a string of i3forum announcements, including the launch of the One Consortium initiative to restore trust in international communications, pledge to develop a fraud KPI tool for its Insights platform, and an MoU signed with GSC to create new SMS fraud guidelines.