North American Numbering Council Meeting Transcript December 16, 2010 (Final) I. Time and Place of Meeting. The North American Numbering Council (NANC) held a meeting commencing at 9:30 a.m., at the Federal Communications Commission, 445 12th Street, S.W., TW-C305, Washington, D. C. II. List of Attendees. Voting Council Members: 1. Hon. Betty Ann Kane Chairman 2. Henry Hultquist AT&T Inc. 3. Jeffrey S. Lanning CenturyLink 4. Cindy Sheehan Comcast Corporation 5. Karen Reidy CompTel 6. Suzanne Howard Cox Communications, Inc. 7. Michael Altschul CTIA – The Wireless Association 8. David Greenhaus 800 Response Information Services 9. Gregory Diamond Level 3 Communications, LLC 10. Peter Pescosolido NARUC - Connecticut 11. Hon. Geoffrey G. Why NARUC – Massachusetts 12. Hon. Robert M. Clayton, III NARUC - Missouri 13. Don Gray NARUC – Nebraska 14. Joel Cheskis NASUCA 15. William L. Vallée NASUCA 16. Jerome Candelaria NCTA 17. John McHugh OPASTCO 18. Mary Retka Qwest 19. Rosemary Emmer Sprint Nextel 20. Natalie McNamer T-Mobile USA, Inc. 21. Thomas Soroka, Jr. USTA 22. Kevin Green Verizon 23. Brendan Kasper Vonage 24. Tiki Gaugler XO Communications Special Members (Non-voting): John Manning NANPA Amy Putnam PA 2 Faith Marcotte Welch & Company Jean-Paul Emard ATIS Commission Employees: Marilyn Jones, Designated Federal Officer (DFO) Deborah Blue, Special Assistant to the DFO Ann Stevens, Deputy Chief, Competition Policy Division Michelle Sclater, Alternate DFO, Competition Policy Division Sanford Williams, Competition Policy Division Gary Remondino, Competition Policy Division III. Estimate of Public Attendance. Approximately 30 members of the public attended the meeting as observers. IV. Documents Introduced. (1) Agenda (2) NANC Meeting Transcript – October 22, 2010 (3) North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA) Report to the NANC (4) National Thousands Block Pooling Administrator (PA) Report to the NANC (5) Numbering Oversight Working Group (NOWG) Report (5a) NANP Administrator 2010 Annual Performance Feedback Survey and Letter from NANC Chairman Requesting Public Input on the 2010 Performance of the NANPA (6) Billing and Collection Agent Report (7) Billing and Collection Working Group (B&C WG) Report to the NANC (8) North American Portability Management (NAPM) LLC Report to the NANC (8a) Letter to Chairman Kane from the NAPM LLC Co-Chairs on The History of NPAC/SMS Administrator(s) Selection (8b) FONPAC Project Plan (9) Local Number Portability Administration Working Group (LNPA WG) Status Report to the NANC (10) Dispute Resolution Team Report – Findings and Recommendations (10a) NANC Report and Recommendation on the Dispute over Change Orders 429, 430, and 435 prepared by NCTA, Comcast, and Cox Communications (10b) NANC Report and Recommendation on Request of Telcordia Technologies, Inc. to Resolve Dispute Concerning NANC Change Orders 429, 430, and 435 prepared by Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, Inc. 3 (11) Industry Numbering Committee (INC) Report to the NANC (12) Future of Numbering (FoN) Working Group Report to the NANC V. Table of Contents. 1. Announcements and Recent News 6 2. Approval of Meeting Transcript from October 22, 2010 7 3. Report of the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) 8 4. Report of the National Thousands Block Pooling Administrator (PA) 13 5. Report of the Numbering Oversight Working Group (NOWG) 19 6. Report from the North American Numbering Plan Billing and Collection (NANP B&C) Agent 23 7. Report of the Billing and Collection Working Group (B&C WG) 26 8. North American Portability Management (NAPM) LLC Report 27 9. Report of the Local Number Portability Administration Working Group (LNPA WG) 42 10. Report of the Telcordia Dispute Resolution Team: Telcordia Appeal 49 11. Status of the Industry Numbering Committee (INC) activities 74 12. Report of the Future of Numbering Working Group (FoN WG) 77 13. Summary of Action Items -- 14. Public Comments and Participation (five minutes per speaker) -- 15. Other Business -- 4 VI. Summary of the Meeting. CHAIRMAN KANE: For the record it is 9:40 a.m. on Thursday, December 16, 2010, and we are meeting in the hearing room of the Federal Communications Commission at 425 12th Street, S.W. in Washington, D.C. I’m Betty Ann Kane, Chairman of the NANC and I’m going to ask us to go around the room and just for the record say who is here. There is a sign-in sheet also going around but just so everybody knows your name. There are name tags. There are place cards that say which company you’re with but if you could say that also. And just a couple of housekeeping reminders. Please put your cell phones, put your pagers, your BlackBerrys and everything else either on silent or on vibrate. And when you go to speak, the gentleman back there is managing the microphones. You don’t have to turn them on and off but just say your name each time you speak for the record please and also don’t start speaking immediately because he has to turn you on and put your card up to be recognized. So to my left: MR. HULTQUIST: Hank Hultquist, AT&T. MR. LANNING: Jeff Lanning, CenturyLink. MS. SHEEHAN: Cindy Sheehan, Comcast. MS. HOWARD: Susanne Howard, Cox Communications. MR. ALTSCHUL: Mike Altschul, CTIA. MR. GREENHAUS: David Greenhaus, 800 Response Information Services. MR. DIAMOND: Greg Diamond with Level 3. 5 MR. WHY: Geoffrey Why, Commissioner of Massachusetts DTC. MR. GRAY: Don Gray, Nebraska Public Service Commission. MR. CHESKIS: I’m Joel Cheskis with the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate for NASUCA. CHAIRMAN KANE: I want to welcome Joel as a new member in his first meeting here. Thank you. MR. CHESKIS: Thank you. MR. CANDELARIA: Jerome Candelaria, NCTA. MR. MCHUGH: John McHugh, OPASTCO. MS. RETKA: Mary Retka from Qwest. MS. EMMER: Rosemary Emmer, Sprint Nextel, and Sue Tiffany with Sprint Nextel will probably join us at some point. Thank you. MS. MCNAMER: Natalie McNamer with T-Mobile, also Anna Miller with T-Mobile. MR. SOROKA: Tom Soroka with U.S. Telecom. MR. GREEN: Kevin Green and Ann Berkowitz, Verizon. MR. KASPER: Brendan Kasper, Vonage. MS. GAUGLER: Tiki Gaugler, XO Communications. MS. JONES: Marilyn Jones, FCC. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you very much. I have on the agenda now announcements and recent news. Like I said I want to welcome Joel who has been appointed by NASUCA to fill one of those seats on the NANC. We’re glad to have 6 your participation. Let me ask, is there anyone on the phone who is on the NANC Council? MS. REIDY: Karen Reidy from CompTel. MR. PESCOSOLIDO: Peter Pescosolido for Connecticut Commission Anthony Palermino NARUC. MR. VALLEE: William Vallée for NASUCA. CHAIRMAN KANE: And I think Commissioner Clayton will be joining us also a little bit later in the meeting. Thank you. ANNOUNCEMENTS AND RECENT NEWS Two things in terms of recent news. Marilyn, any other recent news besides the appointment of Joel that we need to announce? MS. JONES: Just a couple of recent releases from the FCC. I don’t think that we had a chance to send these out yet, but on December 14th, we did release a PN to solicit comments for the technical requirements document for the NANPA Procurement, and we also sent a letter to the NANC Chair and the Pooling Administrator to clarify a couple of issues with the pANI requirements. So those are the latest releases from the FCC. CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes. MS. RETKA: Mary Retka from Qwest. Marilyn, it might be worthwhile to point out to the carriers that are in attendance that comments on the technical requirements are due on December 28th since over the holidays you may not always see all the emails that have come in. 7 CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you, Mary. And those are technical requirements for the NANPA. MS. JONES: Comments due December 28th, reply comments January 4, 2011. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, somebody is going to be busy over the holidays. And we will have a little more detail on the pANI issue also when Debbie’s work comes up. Thank you. APPROVAL OF MEETING TRANSCRIPT The next issue is approval of the transcript of our October 22, 2010 meeting. We had gotten several technical corrections I believe submitted by Telcordia which are simply identifying the names of people where it said unintelligible. And I did receive an email this morning from Adam Newman also with two insertions where it said unintelligible, of who the speaker was or what the acronym was that was being referred to. Are there any other corrections to the transcript? Yes. MS. RETKA: Mary Retka from Qwest. On page 63 the female speaker was me. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Anything else? We did get a couple of requests to kind of revise and make more intelligible what people had said but this is a verbatim transcript so the only corrections that can be made are where a name is spelled wrong or you don’t have the name, or an acronym, that sort of thing. Anything else? 8 Then I’ll entertain a motion to approve the transcript of the October 22, 2010 meeting with the corrections that have been noted. Moved by Mr. Gray and seconded by CenturyLink. Thank you. All in favor of approving the transcript? COUNCIL MEMBERS: Aye. CHAIRMAN KANE: Is there any objection? The transcript is then approved. Thank you. REPORT OF THE NORTH AMERICAN NUMBERING PLAN ADMINISTRATOR (NANPA) MR. MANNING: Good morning, everybody. My name is John Manning, Director with the North American Numbering Plan Administration Group. I believe we would want to number this document. CHAIRMAN KANE: This will be document number three, and we’ll say the transcript is document number two. MR. MANNING: This morning just a brief report on the topics I typically cover with the NANC. On page two, an update on central office code activity. You will recall at the October meeting I gave you some figures in terms of looking at the quantity of central office code assignments for 2010. The data shown on page two of the report provides you an update to that information and with regard to the quantity of assignments, denials, reclamations, and net assignments those figures have changed very little from what was provided in October. 9 As was noted in October, it appears now that the net assignments in 2010 will be slightly above what we experienced in 2007 and a good bit above 2008 and 2009, but not quite the level that we had in 2006. Moving on to area code relief planning, referring back again to the October meeting, we had shown you the NPA exhaust dates at that time as of April of 2010. We’ve since conducted the area code exhaust projections that became available at the end of October of this year so the information contained on page two as well as the attachment showing those area codes exhausting in the next 36 months are using the new exhaust timeframes that were released in October. With regard to area codes exhausting in the next 12 months, there is only one and that is the New York 718/347 overlay. The 929 area code will overlay those two area codes. Since this is already an area code overlay there’s no need for permissive seven or ten digit dialing as such network preparation and custom education started in July of this year and it’s to be completed by March 19, 2011. For the other relief NPA activities, both the Oklahoma 918 and Nebraska 402 area code relief projects, there have been no changes there with regard to their status as reported back in October. I will note that in Wisconsin 920 there is going to be an overlay of the existing 920 area code. The 274 area code will serve as the relief area code. In November, just last month, the PSC decided that they wanted to postpone the implementation of that overlay and therefore on December 7th, the industry decided that permissive dialing, that is permissive seven and ten digit dialing, will 10 begin now on May 4, 2013. Mandatory ten digit dialing will start on January 25, 2014. The next two items on page three, California 408, just earlier this month NANPA conducted an NPA relief meeting for the 408 area code and the industry is recommending an overlay. There will be public input meetings starting in March of 2011 on that particular recommendation. Also in California, the area code 510, in September the California Public Utilities Commission eliminated rationing of the area code 510 thus allowing NANPA to remove the jeopardy situation. Based upon the timeframes for area code relief in previous actions by the CPUC, the NPA relief project for 510 has been dismissed. The relief area code which was area code 341 will now be held in reserve for future relief of the 510 area code unless otherwise directed by the California PUC. The final item on page three of the bulleted items, Arkansas 870, this one is an overlay and is scheduled for 2012/2013 timeframe. One final note on the area code relief activities, we just recently received some correspondence from our friends in St. Maarten. If you recall they had been assigned a 721 NPA code and were planning to have it implemented by this time however due to other circumstances they had to delay that implementation. They’re now planning to have permissive dialing of the 721 area code start in September of 2011, with mandatory dialing in March of 2012. NANPA will publish a planning letter with the specific details next month. 11 I’ll pause there. Are there any questions with regard to CO code activity or area code relief planning activities? CHAIRMAN KANE: Are there any questions from the members? One quick question. I noticed really more in your chart, that with the New York one there will be three area codes in the same area and in Maryland, 1, 2, 3 already, and I guess there would be a 4th. How many situations do we have where there are more than two area codes? You know, we’ve got three and possibly four in the same geographic area. MR. MANNING: Off the top of my head I can mention a couple. There’s down in Texas, and I can’t remember the exact one, 872 -- I can’t remember. I’ll get them wrong if I do it. Atlanta is another big area that has several area codes in it. Of course we have to remember in the New York area you have 212, 646, and also 917, also overlays as well as the area that I just mentioned here. So we’ve got a couple circumstances where we have more then two area codes in an overlay situation. CHAIRMAN KANE: And the trend appears to be regarding these meetings, always the states choosing to do the overlay these days rather than a geographic split. MR. MANNING: That seems to be the trend. We had one project out there that was a Kentucky 270 project which was planning to be an area code split but just this week, which you could include in the paper copy of this report, they’ve decided to dismiss that project so that particular area code split is now off the table 12 and we’ll have to restart the area code relief planning process when necessary. So that was the one split that we knew of that was really in the plan. There are a number of suspended orders and other items within states that may have included some type of split options but I think it’s safe to say in most of those instances, those plans when they come back to be revisited, we’ll need to start from scratch rather than going off recommendations that could be upwards to ten to 12 years old. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. MR. MANNING: I just have one more item here to cover on page three with regard to some change orders. For some time I have been reporting that a NANPA change order 18 was pending and on November 19th we implemented that change order. This change order was in response to a specific INC issue and in essence it had two changes to it. One was a comparison of PA assignment data, block assignment data with NRUF submitted utilization data in an effort to identify those codes as well as new blocks that a service provider failed to provide utilization data, and that would allow NANPA to then follow-up with those appropriate service providers in order to get them to file that utilization. That particular aspect of NAS was updated on the 19th, and that information is now available to both the service providers as well as states. We also added a new report called a Donations Discrepancy Report which 13 allows the system to compare NRUF submitted information and wherever a carrier has said that they have donated a particular block to the Pooling Administrator and indicated that on their NRUF and the Pooling Administrator data says that that carrier still has that particular block assigned to it, this report will identify that discrepancy. The hope is with that particular report the carriers can work together with the Pooling Administrator and determine where the records need to be updated so that these quantities of discrepancies will go down over time. That was change order 18, again implemented on November 19th. As a follow-up to that, we have notified the industry, and we have been conducting training sessions for both the service provider community and just yesterday for state regulators, to make them familiar with the reports so they know what data is included and how they might be able to help them in their overall number optimization efforts. And finally on page four I make note that earlier this month NANPA received a six month extension from the FCC to the current NANPA contract covering the period of January 9, 2011 to July 8, 2011. And finally as I’ve noted earlier, the NPA and NANP exhaust projections were published at the end of October and are available on the NANPA website. That concludes my presentation. Any additional questions? Thank you. REPORT OF THE NATIONAL THOUSANDS-BLOCK POOLING ADMINISTRATOR (PA) CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you, thank you very much. Item four - the 14 report of the National Thousands-Block Pooling Administrator. MS. PUTNAM: Good morning. I’m Amy Putnam, the National Thousands-Block Pooling Administrator and although I have a cold, pooling is fine. (LAUGHTER) CHAIRMAN KANE: I do have a report which we will enter into the record as item number four. Thank you. MS. PUTNAM: The first substantive slide indicates the Pooling Administration activity summary data for the last 12 months, broken out initially by the specific process, and then the summary data for the part threes. And because this is a 12 month running total it includes December of 2009, but I would let you know that so far in 2010, from January through November, we have 93,735 total part threes which exceeds last year total of 87,781. The third chart is a part three summary data sorted by type and then our central office codes opened this year. We opened a total of 1,955 codes in 2009, 1,273 were for pool replenishment. So far in 2010, we’ve opened 1,723 codes for pool replenishment so we are up on codes opened for pool replenishment this year. The next chart shows the summary of rate center file changes. Those are the rate centers that have changed from excluded to optional, or optional to mandatory, or exclude to mandatory, or mandatory single service providers to mandatory. And we had quite a few in November as you can see but of those total 267 changes, 240 were the result of two supplemental implementation meetings, one in Indiana and one in Alaska. 15 The next chart shows our reclamation summary and it occurs to me that when you look at the total number of blocks with overdue part fours and you look at the total number of blocks authorized to be reclaimed, there is a discrepancy there. We find each month that when we notify the states of the overdue part fours, many of those blocks that are showing up on our overdue part four list get resolved right away because the carrier and the state work together to either get an extension or to get the part four in so there often are fewer blocks available to be reclaimed after the state has gotten involved. Pooling administration system performance, with the exception of that one blip in August we have been up and running the whole time. Other pooling related activities, on slide six all the contractual reporting requirements have been submitted on time and posted to the website. The Delegated Authority Petition update, we were asked to do this at each meeting. There are no new petitions for delegated authority. With respect to the ones that have been out there, we conducted the SIM for Indiana 812 and 765 on November 3rd, and we conducted the SIM for Alaska 907 on November 16th. There was some discussion in Alaska about the possible need for a technical workshop because the Commission endorsed the use of type one interconnection agreements and some carriers had issues with that. With respect to pANI, we have received 700 ESQK requests and approved 687. We’ve received 14 registration requests, eight were approved, six were denied. We continue to participate in ESIF AG. I was reelected Co-Chair of the ECDR 16 subcommittee. With respect to the change order chart, I would draw your attention to change orders 16 and 17. Change order 16 was scheduled for December 10th but was rescheduled for February 11, 2011. And change order 17, the new all blocks report was substituted for change order 16 so the new all blocks report went out last week and so far the one comment that I’ve had was that it was large. With respect to change order 18, we submitted that on November 9th and we are waiting for action on that one. The very old overdue part four reconciliation process, we’ve brought that down to 11 very old overdue part fours. The NPAC scrub as you may recall from previous meetings, we started with 9,949 blocks that either had discrepancies, were over-contaminated, or had LRNs associated with them. We worked a lot with the service providers and when we hit the stone wall on that we discussed the issue with the NOWG and then requested state regulatory intervention. So as of November 30th, we have 613 over-contaminated blocks cleaned and placed back in the pool with less then ten percent contamination. We’re really looking at only 280 blocks still needing a new block holder, down from the 9,900 so that was quite a data cleanup. The pooling website, this year Wayne Louie who is our Manager of Security and Technical Operations undertook a massive project in addition to his usual duties and overhauled the National Pooling Administration website. We made it publicly available on November 5th. We believe that we made 17 the site navigation more intuitive and easier to use for all of our customers and the customer comments support our belief. We’re really pleased with the great job that Wayne did and we have a list there of some of the improvements that were made. It was a real team effort but Wayne spearheaded it and did a huge amount of work. Along with that we decided to provide training videos. And because every time we have a change order we have training, and then we also have new people coming in to service providers during the year at times when we’re not having our semi-annual pooling training, we concluded that it would be a good idea to use YouTube and get these videos out there for people to see. CHAIRMAN KANE: They’re really on YouTube? MS. PUTNAM: They are on YouTube but you can’t find them just by going to YouTube. You have to be a PAS user. So we do not anticipate that they will go viral. (LAUGHTER) I have a list here of the number of views of each of the different training videos as of December 6th. I would note that that shows somebody viewed it, but it does not show what happens when they get downloaded. They can be downloaded, and we know that there are service providers that are downloading them for internal use so actually what is happening as far as we can see is that many more people are getting training because of these videos because these figures far exceed the number of people that would actually attend our training. So either they think the videos would be better then our trainings are or 18 because they’re available and they can watch them anytime, they’re getting more hits but we were very pleased with that. We thought we had hit a home run and then we had a glitch because we had a carrier who couldn’t access them. So because of a company block on YouTube they couldn’t get a temporary reprieve or anything so Wayne struggled with that for awhile and then he developed two additional options to allow customers to download the videos and watch them. And we got a wonderful email from one carrier who was obviously pleased with the result and I think Wayne has that framed over his desk. (LAUGHTER) So now as far as we know there is 100 percent accessibility to the video training for all of our customers. In addition to that we conducted two training sessions, one on November 30th, our semi-annual pooling website and PAS overview for service providers and service provider consultants, and on December 8th, the annual pooling website and PAS overview for regular tour users. They all decided, the ones that got on the line, decided they were going to get off and watch the video when it was published so that one didn’t take very long. And finally something that’s not in here. As Marilyn indicated earlier, two days ago we did receive a letter from the FCC clarifying a couple of the issues that we had raised with respect to pANI, clarifying what constitutes an appropriate governmental entity in the INC guidelines and clarifying the documentation that VOIP providers would need to give to the Routing Number Administrator, the RNA, 19 and we’ll be getting that change order in, in due course and not very far in the future due course. I see there’s a question. Yes. MS. MCNAMER: Natalie McNamer with T-Mobile. Will that letter be released publicly for the INC to go back and look at the guidelines to see if there are any changes needed to the governmental authority? MS. JONES: This is Marilyn Jones, FCC. We sent it out to the NANC during our afternoon break. CHAIRMAN KANE: Any questions? You mentioned earlier there were two states you hadn’t heard from, on page nine, and I would take that as an action item. If we can help with that let us know. Thank you very much for that report and all that good work. Really, really those numbers are very impressive. MS. PUTNAM: Thank you. REPORT OF THE NUMBERING OVERSIGHT WORKING GROUP (NOWG) CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. All right, moving right along, item five on the agenda which is the report of the Numbering Oversight Working Group, and there is a document, a report which we will enter as document number five. MS. RIEPENKROGER: Good morning. My name is Karen Riepenkroger. I am one of the Tri-Chairs of the NOWG along with Laura Dalton of Verizon Communications and Natalie McNamer of T-Mobile. 20 And the second page is just the contents of what we’ll be reviewing today. If we can move on to page three, the 2010 NANPA and PA surveys and cover letters. In 2010, the NOWG reviewed the current surveys and cover letters and determined that there were not significant edits needed for 2010. The main edits were punctuation corrections as well as changing 2009 to 2010, and we had a couple of suggested inputs from the NANPA as well as the Pooling Administrator, and we agreed and did incorporate those and we consider those non-substantive updates. The NOWG in 2009, we reached agreement that we’re not moving into the 21st century and we will now have an online survey for 2010. We are still completing the testing of that survey but initial results show that it will be successful and we’re hoping that it will increase participation in the surveys as well as the ease of use, and you don’t have to fill out a paper copy and send it in. And the cover letter of the surveys that you see, it has a blank spot on it to date and that will be filled in when we have the official URL of where that survey will be located. On page four, the NOWG is requesting NANC approval to announce the surveys availability on January 3rd of 2011. And I also believe that we should number the surveys as exhibits as well please. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, we’ll number the surveys as Exhibit 5A. MS. RIEPENKROGER: So I would like to see if there is any objection from the NANC to announce these surveys for availability on January 3, 2011. CHAIRMAN KANE: Do I hear any objection or questions about the 21 survey itself? All right, we’ll take that as unanimous consent. MS. RIEPENKROGER: Just so everyone knows, in addition to the online survey, for those that prefer to fill it out in paper format that option will still be available where you can email it in or if your preference is facsimile, that will also still be available. So we’re not taking away anything, we’re just adding in and all of this information will be published on the Pooling Administrator’s website, the NANPA website, as well as the NANC Chair website. Are there any questions about the surveys? CHAIRMAN KANE: Who does the survey go to? MS. RIEPENKROGER: It’s for all service providers, consultants, regulators, states. You know, we’ve had municipalities from states submit surveys so it’s anybody that interacts with the Pooling Administrator and the NANPA. We welcome their comments and their participation in that survey. CHAIRMAN KANE: We could also put it out through the (unintelligible). MS. RIEPENGROGER: Absolutely. On slide five, this is just a slide to document that the NOWG reviewed and added the following to the current NANPA TRD that was just put out for comments. We added in the NANC transcripts and the NOWG online surveys. These are things that the NANPA handles, and we wanted to be sure that they were part of the TRD. They had not been previously included. The next two slides are just a summary of all of the change orders and I know that John Manning from the NANPA and Amy Putnam of the PA reviewed that so I 22 don’t know that there’s a necessity for me to go through them as well. And slide eight is just a list of all the participating companies. And the last slide is the agenda for first quarter of 2011. Are there any questions or comments? CHAIRMAN KANE: Rosemary. MS. EMMER: Rosemary Emmer, Sprint Nextel. I would like to take a minute to thank all of the NOWG members for two things. First the amount of work they’ve put into this online survey tool has been remarkable. I’ve been watching it on email and I’d like to thank everyone for bringing us to this century with that online tool, and I was really glad that they made the decision to start this after I stepped down as Co-Chair so thank you. (LAUGHTER) Second of all I’d like to thank Karen Riepenkroger and bring to your attention that she has done this co-chairing job for a very, very, very long time. She and I co-chaired together for it seems like several years. I don’t know, but it’s been awhile ago, but she has put in so much work and effort especially with these surveys when this was all manual, all of these years. The amount of work that goes into manually having to tabulate the surveys is remarkable and it’s incredible, and Karen has done a fantastic job not just for us at Sprint Nextel but also industry wide. So thank you Karen and we look forward to just working with you on the other side now. MS. RIEPENKROGER: Thank you very much and I just want to acknowledge that Gwen Zahn with Verizon Wireless will be the new Tri-Chair, the 23 other Tri-Chair starting on January 1, 2011, and Gwen was very instrumental with this online survey so she deserves a lot of credit and recognition for what she has done with the online survey. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. I think you have the thanks of all of us, echoing Rosemary’s remarks there. It’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and the results show. MS. RIEPENKROGER: Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Okay, we have on the agenda to take a break now. We didn’t start until 9:40 a.m. so I think if it’s all right we’ll just keep going and we don’t need a break quite yet. REPORT OF THE NORTH AMERICAN NUMBERING PLAN BILLING AND COLLECTION AGENT (NANP B&C AGENT) We’ll move on to agenda item number six, the report of the North American Numbering Plan Billing and Collection Agent. Again, there is a document you received, Billing Collection Agent Report for the period ending November 30, 2010. We will mark that as Exhibit six. MS. MARCOTTE: Good morning. I’m Faith Marcotte, the Billing and Collection Agent. If you turn to page one, it’s a statement of the financial position of the Fund. As you can see we have about $3 million in the bank at the end of November, $200,000 of receivables which puts our total assets at $3.2 million. We have some accrued liabilities which is just amounts owing to the vendors that we haven’t yet 24 received approval for to pay so that leaves the Fund with a balance of $2.4 million. In other items of note, we had an operational audit done by Ernst and Young in November and they will be releasing the financial statement shortly and there were no issues. And there were two change orders issued for NeuStar which I think John mentioned earlier for a total of $14,000. If you turn to page two, this is a projection of the Fund to the end of June which is the funding year, the total column towards the right versus the budget. So we had anticipated a $500,000 surplus which was the contingency allowance and right now we’re projecting the balance to be $462,000 so it’s fairly close. The bottom right hand corner box shows the discrepancies between the various line items so there’s really nothing major there that’s not hitting the budget, just small differences. If you turn to page four now, that’s just a projection of the expected liabilities that we will be paying out over the next six months, or until the end of June I guess. So there’s nothing again unusual there. We still have the $700,000 for carrier audits which we’ve had for every year but so far none have been authorized so it’s still sitting there. And page five is just some deliverables reports of things we have done. We send out the monthly invoices every month and we’re processing the payments. Still doing the red light notice reviews, sending any delinquent accounts to the FCC for collection. 25 And our contract, we have a renewal until the end of January 31st. It is an interim contract. We don’t know where that’s going yet. We haven’t received an RFP yet. And we’re gradually reducing the old receivable balances and the FCC is helping us clean up those accounts. Are there any questions? CHAIRMAN KANE: A couple of questions. Are there questions from the group? Okay, you said you mail the invoices. MS. MARCOTTE: Yes, the monthly ones. CHAIRMAN KANE: The monthly ones. You don’t do it electronically? MS. MARCOTTE: We don’t have email addresses for everybody. There’s over 5,000. CHAIRMAN KANE: That’s quite a job, mail 5,000 invoices every month. MS. MARCOTTE: Yes, we have a service that does it, that’s correct. Well no, most of them are annual so it’s only about 100 or something that-- CHAIRMAN KANE: That goes out monthly, okay. On the contract renewal which runs out at the end of next month, what is the status of that and who is in charge of making that move forward? MS. MARCOTTE: The FCC has to issue an RFP. CHAIRMAN KANE: The FCC has to issue an RFP, okay. MS. MARCOTTE: But it just keeps getting extended now. CHAIRMAN KANE: It’ gets extended, okay. Can you give us any idea Marilyn where that is in the process of issuing an RFP? 26 MS. JONES: Marilyn Jones, FCC. I would check with the OMD’s contracting office, and I’ll get back to you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, you’ll get back with me and then we can share that information, the information that can be made public on the status of that. Yes. FEMALE SPEAKER:(Off microphone, unintelligible) $1,000 cost for carrier audits. Can you explain that please? MS. MARCOTTE: That’s an allowance for -- the FCC would go out to various carriers or hire auditors to go out to carriers to check that the information they’re producing for us for the revenue is what they have reported to us because that’s how they get billed based on their revenue. They just haven’t done any so we just allow that money because they’ve asked us to allow it but just haven’t done it. FEMALE SPEAKER: (Off microphone, unintelligible). MS. MARCOTTE: Yes. FEMALE SPEAKER:(Off microphone, unintelligible). MS. MARCOTTE: No, and we’ve had it there every year for several years and haven’t done anything yet. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, any other questions? Thank you. Item number eight, the report of the North American Portability Management LLC, the NAPM. Yes, I’m sorry, Billing and Collection Working Group. REPORT OF THE BILLING AND COLLECTION WORKING GROUP MS. EMMER: My name is Rosemary Emmer for those of you that don’t know me, and I chair the Billing and Collection Working Group along with Tim 27 Decker with Verizon who is sitting behind me. We are responsible for the performance and oversight of the functional requirements provided by the Billing and Collection Agent, Welch, Faith, who just gave her presentation. We investigate, and examine, and review their performance and submit a yearly performance review to the NANC. As Welch has just completed their portion of the performance eval, the B&C Working Group will now begin their work on their performance eval from last year. We will be giving you a status of that in February. We are currently examining the billing for monthly collections oversight, the evaluation of the deliverables and the overall budget. Note that this is our busy season, the first quarter of the year. We are working on the budget for next year, the contribution factor for next year. Therefore in the presentation, I have included a page with our 2011 meeting schedule and the bridge number so if any of you would like to join our calls we would be thrilled to add new members to the group. Are there any questions? CHAIRMAN KANE: Any questions? Okay, we will mark this report as Exhibit 7. Thank you, Rosemary. REPORT OF THE NORTH AMERICAN PORTABILITY MANAGEMENT LLC (NAPM LLC) Now we will move to number eight, the report of the NAPM LLC. MR. CLAY: Good morning, NANC. My name is Mel Clay. I am Co- Chair of the NAPM LLC. I share that responsibility with Tim Decker from Verizon 28 Communications. There are three documents that I’ve handed out to you this morning. One is our normal report for the December 16th meeting and then there are two attachments. One is an attachment that’s titled the History of the NPAC/SMS Administrator Selection and the other is the FONPAC Project Plan. I intended originally when this report was made to sit down with you and go over the selection process that we thought explained our legal authority to act as the RFP group to choose a new vendor and also to exercise or to execute the RFP. We’ve always thought that that was our role and that we had the legal authority to do that under the NANC’s oversight and there’s never been a question about the NANC’s oversight. However we met yesterday with the FCC and so the documents that I gave you as exhibits for this presentation now have new meaning or different meaning. The FCC yesterday said that there were some questions that they had about the legal authority of the NAPM LLC to conduct the RFP process for a new contract. There was no question of our oversight of the existing contract but the FCC has questions about us working a new contract. So those issues will be resolved at the FCC and at the request of the FCC or the direction of the FCC, the FCC has asked that the NAPM LLC cease the activities of the FONPAC until we get further direction from them. So at this point the FON PAC will shut down until we hear from the FCC that we should continue. At that same meeting we also talked about the NANC oversight, and I 29 explained to Chairman Kane yesterday that I thought that these status meetings that we give at this NANC meeting each time there’s a NANC meeting, was a part of us allowing the NANC oversight. Chairman Kane has suggested that there be another way to handle that and I’m going to allow Chairman Kane to present that to you at the NANC. We at the NAPM LLC have agreed to the process that Chairman Kane would put in place if the NANC approves it, and we would work and be very flexible to make sure that that happens. The one concern that we have is that this delay that the FCC has requested of us will delay the timeline, and the longer the delay continues the more risk that we have that we will not be able to complete the activities of the project plan in time for the contract and with the current contract. So that’s a big concern of ours but at this point we’ve shut down until we hear from the FCC, and there’s really no need in my opinion to go through these documents that we sent to you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you, Mel. Let me add on that really as a follow-up to questions that were raised. If you look back at the transcript of our May meeting and our October meeting, questions were raised by various members of the NANC about the role of the NANC about the public versus private nature of the procurement process and about the fact that this is a government procurement, as well as now the legal questions perhaps raised, we’re operating under rules that may have been done just for the initial procurement. 30 Those are legal issues that the FCC is looking at. I think we are all committed to having this resolved and having a process in place that is not going to cause any undue delay. There is time in the schedule and so certainly my goal is that by our February meeting we’ll be able to resolve this and move forward. Are there any other comments or questions on this? If you look back at the process that was used before there was a LNPA working group that was set up by the NANC that had some broad representation on it, I propose a way for that to work with the NAPM, with the FONPAC and be sure that this process not only meets the legal requirements but meets the requirements of good government contracting. I think what none of us want is to get six, eight months, a year down the road and then have questions raised that could cause an even greater delay. Yes, Don Gray. MR. GRAY: Don Gray, Nebraska Public Service Commission. I’d just like to reiterate to Mel and the other members of the LLC that there’s never been a question about the integrity or the quality of the oversight that the LLC has provided. The question that has risen is the process that we all need to follow, and I think in my opinion the problem is that it’s not clear that the process that was established in the ’96 -‘97 timeframe was in fact what was intended to go forward for future iterations of a contract or of the activity. And I think that’s why we’ve asked that, let’s look at this process, let’s be sure that it’s properly documented. I’ll use the term so next generations know 31 explicitly what the expectations are and that they know what that process is as opposed to people sitting around a table that may or may not have been there when this started saying well, I remember it meant such and such and someone else saying oh no, that was not what we meant. So in any government entity you need to have the rules clearly defined, and I think that’s what we’re asking be done. It has nothing to do with the integrity, the quality, or the work that Mel and the rest of the LLC have been doing and I know will continue to do. MR. CLAY: Thank you. And those sentiments were exactly some of the things that were talked about yesterday at the FCC meeting. CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes, Mary. MS. RETKA: Mary Retka from Qwest. I need to ask a clarification question because I’ve heard things a couple of different ways. I know we’ve seen the timeline here at NANC and those of us that have been involved in the NAPM LLC. The statement that you made Chairman Kane, about the (unintelligible) sounded like there was a different version of a timeline with a little bit more time in it, and I know that the NANC has in the past requested that the contract not be extended again and so it was my recollection, and I’m sure people around the table as well, that that is like a hard stop date. So who has the control over the timeline at this point? Who holds that and insures that the process follows that timeline so that, you know, we’ve seen on other contracts a number of extensions, or is it the desire to pose the question to the NANC 32 to open it up for other extensions? Is the hard and fast date still the hard and fast date I guess is -- CHAIRMAN KANE: In my mind it is still a hard and fast date. What I meant was that when you look in there, I think based on yesterday’s discussion, there is a little leeway within the -- not at the end but to come up at the same end. And the answer is it’s in the hands of the FCC now. MS. RETKA: So the control of the timeline is with Marilyn? CHAIRMAN KANE: With the FCC. Well, it’s a number of Bureaus at the FCC and that is why my goal is by our February meeting, we will be back with direction from the FCC, clarification on moving forward with a timeline that will still get this done without the need for extensions and making it by the deadline that’s required and also with clear elements of good public contracting, good government contracting. Commissioner Why. COMMISSIONER WHY: Jeff Why from Massachusetts. I just wanted to publicly express my support for Chairman Kane’s proposal to have an open public and clear process. I also recognize LLC has done a very good job in the past but I do support Chairman Kane’s proposal. Thank you. MR. HULTQUIST: Hank Hultquist, AT&T. I mean I hope that this does work out so there is no delay. I guess something Don said raised a question in my mind about that which is that we’ll end up with sort of clearly defined rules, I think is how Don described it. Is there an expectation that the FCC is going to be adopting 33 rules here that would govern this or does clearly defined rules mean some other process with the FCC? CHAIRMAN KANE: I don’t at this point anticipate a rulemaking process that would take some time. I can’t speak for the FCC. It may be an order, it may just be a directive, maybe a clarification, but as I said I think we’re all committed to not causing any undue delay in whatever is needed but it is under advisement at the FCC. Rosemary. MS. EMMER: Rosemary Emmer, Sprint Nextel. Being intimately involved in the process, and the timeline, and the project plan that was submitted to the NANC, and all of the work that we’ve already put into this and all of the work that needs to happen over the next couple of years, I can conclusively say that every day there is a delay in deciding if the LLC is going to be the entity who will be putting this RFI/RFP together will cause -- every single day that goes by will cause a delay, period, end of story. And I’m expecting that the delay will come at the end so just for the record we cannot have, we, the LLC body in my opinion as Rosemary Emmer with Sprint Nextel, we cannot have a delay for months on end where we are sitting here doing nothing, stopped work. We have already cancelled many, many conference calls and face-to-face meetings between now and February. We cannot have a precedence set that we can be on and off and expect to meet a deadline even a couple of years out. So I just want to put on the record that expect that if this continues 34 (unintelligible) way that the end result will mean in our opinion or in my opinion that we will need a delay at the very end. The second thing I wanted to ask is, I’m having trouble understanding what a clear and open process is so I guess I wasn’t quite grasping what we would do in February that would make the process more open or more clear. So I know you mentioned an LNPA Working Group but I’m confused by that so I wondered if you could clarify what the process is that you would be presenting. CHAIRMAN KANE: I will be presenting a process after I get guidance from the FCC frankly as to the legal aspects of this but what I have proposed is a LNPA Working Group appointed by the NANC that would work in collaboration with and would build on all of the work that the FONPAC and NAPM has done. And that at appropriate points such as approval of the RFI or approval of the RFP, those would be decisions by the NANC and that would make very clear that the final recommendation would come to the NANC and then would go to the FCC. The intention is to build on the work and obviously not to start all over again. Nobody wants to do that. MS. EMMER: Well, certainly, right. CHAIRMAN KANE: Further then that since it is in the hands of the FCC, we’ll leave it there for the next month. MS. EMMER: So the LNPA Working Group that we already have today would be playing a part in this as well? CHAIRMAN KANE: This would be a new LNPA Selection Working Group 35 that would be appointed for this purpose to work in collaboration with the FONPAC. MS. EMMER: Okay, so this would be a brand new IMG or Working Group. Okay, so I guess the first thing, if we could call this LNPA working group a different name it would be helpful. CHAIRMAN KANE: It would be a Selection Working Group. MS. EMMER: Okay, so if we called it that then there wouldn’t be such confusion of these two. CHAIRMAN KANE: Right, I’m sorry. It’s not the current LNPA Working Group. In the first procure there was an LNPA Working Group that had broad representation, state representatives, carriers, other people on it that was part of the process. And I think the NAPM has indicated that they would agree with that but the FCC has raised questions of its own, and they are looking into those, and they are committed to me that they will try to resolve this expeditiously because as I said what I don’t -- MS. EMMER: Okay, and that would include like who would be -- you know, just all members of the public raise their hand and say okay, I can have information. So I guess in February we should expect to have a proposal for the NANC to discuss or -- CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes, I expect to have something in February, and as I said since it is in the hands of the FCC at this point there is not much more we can discuss at this point. 36 MR. CLAY: The NAPM LLC yesterday basically said that whatever the oversight would be that NANC recommends, that we would be flexible enough to work with them and collaborate with that group to make sure that this process gets done well. I had asked our outside attorney to come in and address some of these issues so if it’s okay I would like Todd Daubert to just take a moment. CHAIRMAN KANE: Very briefly, but as I said, I mean this is in the hands of the FCC. MR. DAUBERT: All I wanted to really say was -- CHAIRMAN KANE: Sit down and identify yourself, please. MR. DAUBERT: Todd Daubert, outside counsel for NAPM LLC. I just wanted to reiterate what Chairman Kane had said about the meeting yesterday. The meeting was actually very constructive, and we reiterated that the NAPM LLC has always viewed its role as recommending a vendor to the NANC for NANC selection and has always agreed that NANC and the FCC have oversight. And Chairman Kane and the NAPM LLC discussed ways that the oversight could be implemented and frankly, we didn’t see any problems with working that out. The FCC at the end of the meeting said that when you look at the rules and you look at the current regulations governing the selection of the new vendor or vendors, it’s not clear that the existing rules extended past the initial selection. So they didn’t say they had made up their mind about anything. 37 There was no suggestion that anything would change as a practical matter. There was a question in the FCC about whether it should act to clarify the rules and the delegations and if so it was considering doing so through an order, where a notice of proposed rule making was not intended because I believe that all of the parties here understand and agree that something as lengthy as a notice of proposed rule making would undoubtedly lead to delay. Now there was no definitive discussion of the timeline, just to clarify the timeline. The beginning of the timeline is squarely in the hands of the FCC. There was no discussion about altering the timeline as it was established. I think obviously that’s something that will have to be considered once the FCC comes back with a start date. So really just reiterating what everybody said, there was nothing said that there would be massive changes. There was nothing said to indicate there would be a notice of proposed rule making. There was a suggestion that people were going to try to work as quickly as possible and I believe there was a commitment between NANC Chairman and NAPM LLC to discuss flexible and practical means to insure that the oversight is accomplished in a way that preserves the integrity of the RFI and the RFP process. Hopefully that’s helpful. MS. EMMER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. MR. CLAY: If there’s nothing else I’ll give you some of your 45 minutes back. 38 CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. I do want to mark your report as Exhibit 8, and then the two attachments which was the letter with the history as Exhibit 8A, and the original project plan as 8B. And I also want to thank -- there were a number of entities that were very helpful in kind of going back through the history and pulling together documents from ten, 15 years ago that helped put this patchwork together. Let me also indicate, Commissioner Robert Clayton of Missouri has joined the bridge. Welcome Commissioner Clayton. COMMISSIONER CLAYTON: I apologize for being late. We have some weather issues going on in Missouri as I’m sure some other parts of the state are. I just wanted to let you know that I was on the phone and that Missouri fully supports your recommendation, Chairman Kane, and thank you for your leadership. Thanks. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you, Commissioner Clayton. I see a question over here. MR. GREEN: Kevin Green, Verizon. CHAIRMAN KANE: Speak a little louder. MR. GREEN: Kevin Green, Verizon. CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes, sir. MR. GREEN: I just wanted to make sure I understand. So the NAPM LLC now will stand down until February or until the FCC comes back with their ruling 39 and then at that point will start to establish a selection team and then the selection team will provide oversight to the NAPM LLC, is that how it’s -- CHAIRMAN KANE: That’s what I have proposed and those things may happen concurrently. I may hear from the FCC earlier. MR. GREEN: Okay, we’re just concerned about the timeline. CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes, we all are, but I will reiterate my concern that unless we get some of these legal issues and the role of the NANC established clearly from the beginning, and that we make sure that this is a process that follows some of the elements of normal good government contracting, because this is a federal advisory committee and the FCC is a federal agency and we have started with something that appears to be totally in the hands of a private membership group, and unless we get that settled in the beginning, we could have an issue a year from now or 18 months from now that could cause an even greater delay if objections or concerns are raised that far down the process. This is really being done also to be sure that we don’t have delays involving the process. MR. GREEN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Mary. MS. RETKA: Mary Retka from Qwest. I just have a follow-up question on the process and the criteria for the parties who are going to be a part of your Selection Working Group IMG, whatever we’re going to call that. And it sounded to me like from your last response you’re expecting to establish that in February and in that two month timeframe somehow the new 40 timeline will have to incorporate that gap (unintelligible) number of parties who have so much of their process involved in LNP and the impact on that to the ecosphere of numbering. I just would like to understand more about. Are you looking for volunteers to be ready in February, and obviously these need to be our folks that are very involved with the understanding of the technical requirements since that needs to be done in a pretty clear and quick timeframe. And we’re right now looking at some of those same people looking at the technical requirements for the NANPA in an extremely short timeframe so to get the best result for something that’s so critical to the national telecommunication infrastructure I’m hoping we have a little better understanding of that process and criteria. Can you share a little bit more about what your thoughts are on that? CHAIRMAN KANE: Well, my thought is number one that I’m proposing to work with the FON Pact as some of your memories go way back. In the first iteration where there was a Selection Working Group there were also two subcommittees on architecture and on technical requirements. What I proposed is that the FONPAC provides that function because they are the experts there. There is more looking at policy issues and the shape of the RFI which I think can be revised and done very quickly and that the process of developing the RFP could go on concurrently with the sending out the RFI, broadly disseminating it et 41 cetera. But absolutely to build on and use the expertise that has already been established in the FONPAC. Cindy. MS. SHEEHAN: Cindy Sheehan, Comcast. So just for a little bit more clarification, on that subcommittee are you saying that it’s just members from the FONPAC or are you also -- I didn’t think so. CHAIRMAN KANE: No, they would collaborate with the FONPAC. MS. SHEEHAN: Okay. And they would provide then, this special subcommittee would then provide oversight or recommendation to the NAPM for the NAPM to make the final recommendation to NANC? CHAIRMAN KANE: Their role is in the selection process. I think we’re still talking about their actual role in reviewing the responses but anticipating their role in the RFI and in the development of the RFP. There are policy issues there too and criteria et cetera that go into a good government, what are the qualifications and those kinds of things. Any other questions? Yes. MS. MILLER: Anna Miller with T-Mobile. I just wanted to clarify one thing from a NANC representative that was actually around in 1996 and 1997. CHAIRMAN KANE: That’s what we needed, that history. MS. MILLER: When we were going through the initial selection, and I just wanted to clarify that as a NANC representative and as a NAPM LLC member I was never under the impression that this RFP decision was totally in the hands of a private membership group. 42 It was always my anticipation and understanding that the experts in this group and in the initial process, the reason they left that recommendation to the LLC was because of issues of confidentiality during the evaluation, that that was simply a recommendation and it was always my impression that it would be the NANC that would take that recommendation and modify it or accept it or reject. So in my understanding it was always the NANC that would be the decider and that the experts would just provide recommendation to this body. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Cindy, did you have another question? No, okay. Thank you for your report, and I will keep everyone informed as we move through this. MR. CLAY: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: We’ve got lunch on here but it is only 10:50 a.m. so I think we will move on. REPORT OF THE LOCAL NUMBER PORTABILITY (LNPA) WORKING GROUP MR. SACRA: Thank you, Chairman Kane. I’m Gary Sacra, Co-chair of the LNPA Working Group. The other two Co-Chairs are Paula Jordan with T-Mobile and Linda Peterman with One Communications. CHAIRMAN KANE: You have a report, and we will number it as Exhibit 9. MR. SACRA: Thank you. Good morning everybody. The first item on the report is the status of FCC orders 0941 and 1085, the implementation of next day 43 porting. I’m pleased to say that based on feedback that has been expressed in the LNPA Working Group meetings and conference calls that the process is still working very well. We will continue to get feedback and monitor the status of the implementation at future meetings and on our conference calls. We do remain on track for the next major milestone and that’s February 2, 2011. That’s when the smaller service providers in the industry, those with less than two percent of the nation’s subscribers are scheduled to implement next day porting based on those two FCC orders. Any questions? And again we will continue to provide you feedback at future NANC meetings based on the feedback we receive at the Working Group meetings. The next item on the report is NANC change order 437. There is the peered NPAC architecture that has been proposed by Telcordia. As I’ve been reporting at the NANC meetings, we’ve been undergoing a feasibility analysis of that peered NPAC proposal for I would say probably the last 18 months. We started back in January of 2009. At the last Working Group meeting we reviewed an initial draft of the final report. We’ve completed the technical and operational feasibility analysis as I reported at the October NANC meeting. Now we are in the process of developing a final report that summarizes the work that has taken place over the past 18 months, the documentation that has been reviewed based on the change order. As I also reported in October, in terms of the question of operational 44 feasibility of NANC 437, there were two opinions. One opinion, a group of service providers felt that it was not operationally feasible. Another group of service providers felt that NANC 437 was operationally feasible. So this final report will include the position papers that were drafted based on both opinions. Those position papers will be included in the final report. Our expectation is that we will finalize that report at the January LNPA Working Group meeting. At that point in time assuming that it is finalized on schedule, we will immediately turn it over to Telcordia who had come to the Working Group requesting the feasibility analysis and it will also be distributed out over the LNPA Working Group distribution list which I’m sure many of you are on. Just an item of interest. We did what I believe was a pretty close approximation of the number of people hours that were spent analyzing the NANC 437 change order and it is somewhat north of 5,600 people hours. And again that’s the number of people hours that were spent in the Working Group in the meetings and on the conference calls. That doesn’t include individual service provider and vendor analysis that they did back home in preparation for the meeting. So it was a big effort. A lot of work was done, a lot of good work was done in analyzing NANC 437. Questions? The next item on page two is NPAC Release 3.4. That status, again I’ve been reporting on that at previous NANC meetings. It’s now currently undergoing vendor interoperability testing. The 3.4 Release contains a number of operational and 45 performance enhancements to the NPAC and the interfaces and the overall porting process. One of the major change orders in that release is that we’ve raised the throughput requirements for both the SO and LSMS interfaces in preparation or to meet needs that service providers have expressed certain (unintelligible) would require a large volume of transactions to be pumped over the interface. So in order to meet those expected increased volumes, NPAC Release 3.4 will increase the throughput requirements for both the SO and LSMS interfaces to meet those expect increased volumes. 3.4 is scheduled for service provider turn up testing in the February and March 2011 timeframe and then the scheduled rollout of release of 3.4 region by region is scheduled in the March through May 2011 timeframe. Any questions on 3.4? This last item in the report, we wanted to give the NANC a heads up that we are having some discussions in the Working Group on a possible best practice that would eventually -- if we can reach consensus on this best practice in the Working Group, as has been our practice we would bring it to NANC and request the NANC’s endorsement and forward it to the FCC with a request for adoption. This particular best practice addresses what we’ve labeled “projects”. Since the inception of number portability back in the 1997 timeframe, many if not most and perhaps if not all service providers have established varying certain thresholds that above which, whether that threshold is in terms of the number of telephone 46 numbers on a port request that they receive or in terms of the complexity of the port request itself, but above certain thresholds and it varies service provider by service provider. If those thresholds are exceeded in the port request then that port request may not be applicable to the standard four day porting interval, 24 hour firm order confirmation return plus the three day overall interval based on TN volumes on the request or complexity. And what the proposed best practice is under discussion that the Working Group seeks to address is to establish an industry standard for a minimum threshold for when the old service provider in a port request could consider that port request to fall into the project bucket and therefore may not be applicable for the overall four day porting interval. We are discussing a number of service provider proposals that have taken place in the Working Group. Our next discussion will take place at the January 2011 Working Group meeting. And as I said earlier, if consensus is reached and I believe we are getting closer and closer as these discussions have taken place, I believe we are becoming closer to reaching consensus, but if we are able to do that at some point in time soon thereafter we would then bring it to the NANC and request endorsement and forwarding to the FCC for adoption. Questions? CHAIRMAN KANE: Any questions? Don Gray. 47 MR. GRAY: Don Gray, Nebraska Public Service Commission. Gary, a question that has come up within at least Nebraska, and I’m sure other rural states that have the smaller rural ILECS that wireless was something very new for them, question of type one numbers and how this process is going to work for type one numbers. Has there been discussion on how that possibly could be streamlined absent a rural carrier not agreeing to give a block to the wireless carrier that’s got most of the numbers, or anything in that area you can share with us? MR. SACRA: That is a very good question. We did have a brief discussion actually at the November Working Group meeting about type one numbers. It was the view of the vast majority of the service providers that the type one numbers were kind of outside of this particular discussion on projects. We do have a plan or a process if you will up on the LNPA website for migrating type one numbers to traditional type two wireless numbers. I understand that there are still I would imagine quite a number of probably individual type one numbers out there. The vast majority of type one numbers were migrated years ago with major projects that took place between the wireline providers that actually had the blocks and then the wireless providers that actually served the customers. In terms of the remaining individual type one numbers, I guess I would urge providers to take a look at that process that we established and put up on our website. I’d be happy to forward (unintelligible) to anybody who would like it but I would 48 urge providers to follow that process in terms of if there is a desire to migrate their type one numbers to type two, I would urge them to follow that process because I think it worked very well years ago when those major projects were taking place. MR. GRAY: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Other questions? Thank you for your report. Perhaps we will by our February meeting then have a report update on the implementation of the small carriers porting. MR. SACRA: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN KANE: Appreciate all that work. Thank you very much. MR. SACRA: Thank you, Chairman Kane. Thank you everyone. CHAIRMAN KANE: We have just three items actually left on the agenda, item 10, report of the Telcordia Dispute Resolution Team, and then status of the Industry Numbering Committee, INC activities report, and the Future of Numbering report. It’s 11:05 a.m. I think if we take a break now, about a 10 or 15 break and come back, we can wind up with those three items and be out in time for a late lunch instead of a noontime lunch. So we’ll adjourn until 11:20 a.m. Thank you. (Short Break) CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, we will come back into the meeting. Thank you. For the record it’s 11:22 a.m. We’re back on the record. As I said we have three items to do. My Executive Assistant who is in an office with actual windows a few blocks from here says that it is snowing hard and 49 the streets are covered so we will try to wind this up. I think we can do that in the next 45 minutes and be out by noontime. For those of you who have flights or other travel, you should be fine. TELCORDIA DISPUTE RESOLUTION TEAM: TELCORDIA APPEAL Okay, the next item, an easy one here, is item number 10, the report of the Telcordia Dispute Resolution Team. That Telcordia Dispute Resolution Team as you recall is currently myself and Don Gray, the alternate NANC representative from the Nebraska Public Utility Commission. Let me summarize briefly without going into all of the history, kind of where we are in this dispute that was referred to the NANC to see if it could resolve it, which is a dispute about whether certain (unintelligible) are necessary to be included. The Dispute Resolution Team made a report and we distilled that dispute into two issues, one of which was procedural, one of which was substantive. The procedural issue was, was the full appropriate process followed in the adoption of these change orders and the substantive one was do the URI fields in the instant change orders which are change numbers number 429, 430, and 435 meet the requirement of 47 C.F.R. 52.25(f) that the fields in NPAC “shall be limited to the information necessary to route telephone calls to the appropriate telecommunication carriers.” Our conclusion on the first issue was that the full appropriate process was not followed, that the NANC had never actually made that determination itself as we believe the rules clearly require. 50 And on the second issue we recommended that the FCC be asked to do a rulemaking that would define and update perhaps the definition of telephone calls, that this information is necessary to route. Since the last meeting when that recommendation or the report from the Dispute Resolution Team was made, we have also received two other documents which were circulated I believe to everyone. One is a document from NCTA, Comcast, and Cox Communications and the other is a report from Sprint, T-Mobile, and I believe some others which was a proposed report and recommendation. They were both reports in draft, alternative reports and recommendations. If I may summarize what those two said, the report or the recommendation from NCTA, Comcast, and Cox agreed that NANC is the appropriate body to determine whether the fields are necessary, that no one disputes that NANC has not made such a determination, whether or not the fields were necessary, and went on to recommend that we decide that the fields are not necessary, that calls are being completed without these fields currently. The recommended report from Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and others was that there had been a substitute process or a delegation to the LNPA and that the LNPA had determined that the fields were necessary and as such recommending that the NANC therefore didn’t need to make that determination because the NANC had a history of delegating that kind of decision making to the LNPA. I hope I’ve summarize correctly where those recommendations are. I believe there is one thing we do have consensus on and that is that the 51 NANC has not made that determination that NANC has not made a determination whether or not these fields are necessary so I think that is not in dispute. What is in dispute is, was a delegation made so that determination by the NANC is not needed and then secondly are these fields necessary. We normally work by consensus. I will take a few minutes to see if there is a consensus on either of these alternative recommendations and if the proposers would like to speak to them. MS. MILLER: Thank you, Chairman. Anna Miller with T-Mobile. I just would like to take a few minutes to give an overview of the recommendations sponsored by Sprint and T-Mobile. Given the amount of effort that was put into really summarizing a five year debate over whether or not the URI fields are necessary and basically I think what all this boils down to, this (unintelligible) is whether or not the NANC wants to have an unduly narrow definition of telephone calls or whether we want to follow the intent of Congress that number portability be a dynamic concept, that it accommodate the innovation and the technological evolution of services available to subscribers. And essentially I think what this comes down to from a background standpoint, again this has been going on since 2005, and the FCC put these NANC change orders on hold in 2005. Then in 2007 they removed the hold or the advance and that was coincidental with the requirement that number portability be supported by VoIP service providers. And then once again the LNPA Working Group went through its usual process of evaluating change orders. 52 There was industry consensus to recommend these change orders and that went to the cost/benefited evaluation of the NAPM LLC. There was this super majority vote at the LLC to support this and then the change orders moved forward. And this was always reported on to the NANC I guess without any objection at the time. And then a year later in 2009, Telcordia filed this dispute. So we’ve already been through this process of intervening with decisions made by the Working Group, and I guess this would be the second time that we’re disputing as to whether or not there should be another intervention with the conclusion of the LNP Working Group and the NAPM LLC. So I guess my perspective is that unless this -- since we’ve already been through this once, unless there’s consensus that the URI fields are not necessary, that the FCC should not need to intervene in this process again. And in the report we summarize what the issues are which I think is a good job, that again it’s this interpretation of are these URI fields necessary, was the proper procedure followed. I think that our document shows that the proper procedures were followed, and then in the comment section if you look at the comments that were filed with the Dispute Team and the comments that were filed in the Telcordia petition, there’s a vast majority that disagree with Telcordia’s position and that really support the appropriateness of the URI fields in the NPAC. And then the report goes through an analysis which basically I think focuses on the fact that the NPAC was never really restricted to just processing telephone 53 calls. The major NPAC functions are for routing, billing, rating, and network maintenance in a number portability environment. And I find it interesting when we started discussing this in terms of what’s necessary to have efficient routing of services and, you know, what type of information did the NPAC need to transmit so that service providers can efficiently provide services to their customers -- and I was looking at a report by CTIA, it’s semiannual wireless industry survey which shows the amount of wireless usage 12 months ending June ‘05 when we started this debate and 12 months as of June 2010. And in June ‘05, for the wireless industry there was about 1.3 trillion minutes of use and only 57 billion SMS texting messages. Five years later when we’re having this debate as to whether URIs are necessary for efficient routing of services to customers, the (unintelligible) the level of voice minutes of use has leveled off over the last three years at about 2.3 trillion and yet the amount of MMS SMS texting messages has increased to 1.8 trillion and the amount of MMS messages which was virtually zero five years ago is now at a level of 56 billion messages. So the composition of the services that are being provided to our customers has really changed over the last five years. It’s almost half now texting and MMS type messaging and that’s why a lot of the carriers support having URI fields in the NPAC so that we can accommodate this change in composition and traffic and have more efficient options on how that’s routed and how we do portability correction for those types of services. And that’s why in this report we can conclude that the URI fields should 54 remain as optional perimeters and that indeed the industry did follow the proper processes. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Other discussion? Yes. MR. CANDELARIA: Jerome Candelaria, NCTA. We are one of the parties who submitted a competing proposal which you’ve accurately summarized. I’ll just highlight two points. We heard a description of the dramatic increase in use of MMS type messaging and text messaging, and we also have the successful completion of telephone calls today. That goes to one of the points we raise in our competing proposal that having URIs in the NPAC is not necessary today. We’ve heard how the success of this new technology is flourishing, even outside of having URI in the NPAC, and I think since 2005 NANC recognized that there’s been one milestone that this body has faced and that’s the milestone of wedding the world of IP addresses into the world of numbering and when that issue has come up before this body, it was clear that there was not consensus on that issue. It went to the FCC, to the Wireline Competition Bureau and it came back saying we can reconsider 400. A review of the record of NANC’s transcripts and records reveals that that issue was never brought back to the NANC and so while the LNPA Working Group moved forward, we can’t escape the fundamental notion that NANC has not proved this crucial change in the way the NPAC is used and that’s why we provided the competing proposal and determination. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Other comments? Yes. MS. TIFFANY: Sue Tiffany, Sprint Nextel. I would respectfully disagree 55 with you that the NANC did not evaluate. Does the NANC know every change order that is in Release 3.4? Have they approved individually each change order that is in 3.4? The answer to that is not that I’m aware of. They got the information from the NAPM LLC about what was in change order 3.4. There were no challenges to that so it’s gone forward and as was reported by the LNPA Working Group, we’re going through inter-carrier testing right now, (unintelligible) testing right now with that and it’s going to be implemented starting in March. The (unintelligible) Statement of Work for the -- they split out the three URI fields out of 3.4 for one purpose, one purpose only. The Canadian companies got them for free so we split those three change orders out of 3.4 into a separate Statement of Work because as the most favored nation contract, we get it for free also. That’s the only reason it has a separate Statement of Work. So that Statement of Work again was reported to the NANC Chair, Chairman Koutsky for reasons that I’m not familiar with, I don’t know. But the FCC and Chairman Koutsky did not have a NANC meeting for approximately a year. The Statement of Work, 3.4, and the Statement of Work for three URI fields went through the process of the LNPA and the NAPM and reported to the NANC Chair because there was no NANC meeting during that time period. They were delayed, implementation of the 3.4 specifically, these Statements of Work were delayed because of FCC’s 0941. When the FCC put that order through it was the industry -- the LNP Working Group had a very short time period 56 to determine how to actually implement that process so everything kind of went on hold except for the peering model which has also been reported on. We continued to work that, slower but we continued to work that. So I would disagree respectfully that the process was not followed. It was followed to the best of everyone’s ability given the circumstances that we were in. Each time it has come up to the technical group that is given the options of evaluating these change orders, it’s been a consensus decision to approve them. And when it went to the NAPM LLC again it was split out because Canada got them for free, the United States needed to get them for free so they were split out from the 3.4 which was going to cost us money. And again, the consensus and probably Anna mentioned, they had a super majority vote so every time the industry has had an option to vote on this it has passed the consensus, no question about it. The reason it came back here to the NANC is because of this dispute. The dispute was brought by a competitor, a competing vendor, to say that it shouldn’t be in the (unintelligible) which is opposite of what all of the service providers who are trying to efficiently rate and route and do network maintenance have said. They’ve all said we want these. As Anna pointed out and I’m glad she brought that report, the MMS and SMS messages have increased significantly and from a Sprint perspective we do not see that reducing. The more Smart phones that come out, the more options people have, the 57 more data that’s being used, the more text messaging, if I call my son who’s in college, he never answers but if I text him I get an answer. That’s true for most teenagers today. They’re very good at texting. I don’t see that reducing ever or at least for the time being until the next new thing comes along. Yes, it’s being handled today to your point. Yes, it’s being handled today. Each of the carriers who are working with text messaging and data and MMS have made individual arrangements with vendors, separate vendors to have this process work. The (unintelligible) having this information in the NPAC, we will be able to much more efficiently have it. And it does break. There are times when because of porting, the vendors who are involved don’t get the messages that there’s been a port of the telephone number and now the service is with another service provider, and there are now different vendors supporting that service provider. So it does break and carriers are then required to go figure out where it broke down in the process and how to get it corrected and we do that, but we believe that the process could be done more efficiently, faster correcting these problems if we had the information in the porting database, and that’s why Sprint has supported the addition of the URI fields into the NPAC. We completely disagree with the narrow definition of the telephone number because as Anna’s report pointed out that is not how the consumers are using their telephone. AT&T with the iPhone, Sprint now with our EVO that we’re advertising, T-Mobile with their Android phone, we are doing everything we can to satisfy our 58 consumers who want those Smart phones, who want to be able to do data and texting. I thought it was interesting in the report that the voice process has stayed level. So just a few points if I could that I’d like to get on the record. We think that this is a trumped up issue by a disgruntled competitor. The NPAC is a perfect place for the URI fields given the dynamic technical nature of the portability, the built in neutral oversight insuring that porting parties are equally represented, and the industry collaboration forums surrounding the LNP. NPAC contains nearly half the active telephone numbers in the U.S. excluding URI from it. It puts a massive operational burden on future inventory synchronization efforts. Freezing the NPAC to exclude URI fields would be an anti- competitive action for NANC to take in that it removes options for service providers looking for cost effective means to manage their porting, routing, and rating. The intended contextual definition of telephone calls includes those services covered by NPAC URI. On multiple occasions the FCC has defined telephone calls to more then simple voice transmission which I believe several of the state commissions who commented on the Telcordia dispute pointed out. I know there was more than one, I think it was two. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. Cindy. MS. SHEEHAN: Cindy Sheehan, Comcast. I think that Sprint shared that this whole process of using the URI fields would be more efficient so I think the question still stands, are these fields necessary and the fact that neither the NANC 59 nor the FCC directed or asked for this issue to be addressed, it may be an issue that’s happening in the industry. It wasn’t asked upon the LNP to go and address the particular issue to try to solve this. I think the other thing is that it has not been substantiated that the use of URI fields are necessary in the NPAC database. I think that is the other key if it hasn’t been -- again it’s saying it’s more efficient but it hasn’t been substantiated that it is necessary and especially necessary in the NPAC number portability database. So I think that’s the real (unintelligible)) like I think the industry needs to look at vendors within the industry to provide this type of service versus trying to put a bunch of multiple activities. As our telecommunication industry continues to grow I believe there’s going to be things beyond what all of us even know or are experiencing today, that the possibilities are infinite. So I really think we need to think beyond the NPAC database, and we need to be looking to our vendors whoever those vendors are out in the industry to be providing these type of services versus compiling and making our NPAC portability database more complex which adds more complications to just the simple process of trying to port a number and telling customers, I’m sorry our database is down because now we’ve put the entire wish list in one database and that creates more problems. When you start to put too many things in one database you’re going to create more problems, and I think we need to think beyond and we need to have developers 60 out there actively going after the best process versus just the quick process and the quick answer. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. I see four comments and then we’ll take comments from the public and then we’ll try to wind this up. MR. GREEN: Kevin Green, Verizon. First a comment and then a question. First for the record, Verizon fully supports the Sprint/T-Mobile recommendation. Secondly from a process perspective, in the likely event that we don’t reach consensus because it doesn’t sound like we’re heading in that direction, would all recommendations be forwarded to the FCC or would the Telcordia petition be dismissed? CHAIRMAN KANE: If there’s no consensus I will report to the FCC that we were not able to reach consensus and whatever background materials need to go with that. MR. GREEN: Thanks. MS. GAUGLER: Tiki Gaugler with XO Communications. I would just like to respond to the comment that Cindy made from Comcast. The rules do not say that the fields that are in NPAC need to be necessary in NPAC. It says they need to be necessary for routing. I don’t think there’s a dispute that this is routing information and that that language is to limit the information that goes into NPAC to routing information, and there’s no question here or argument that there will be a whole plethora of other information that will be included in the NPAC. 61 This information while it may be found elsewhere and as Cindy and others have said, it can be done by other vendors, however, it is necessary for routing and, therefore, meets the requirement. The emphasis on the word necessary is very narrow under their interpretation. It does not mean or should not mean that it can’t be done elsewhere. A lot of the information that’s in NPAC could be put in another database, however, it’s not. It’s put in the NPAC so that the carriers have non-discriminatory access to it and that we can facilitate efficient routing for services that carriers are providing. So XO fully supports the Sprint/T-Mobile recommendation and believes that the URI fields should be put into place. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. MR. HULTQUIST: Hank Hultquist at AT&T. I guess I just endorse what Tiki said. I think if we were to take the view that there could be routing information that can be excluded because it’s not necessary for routing on the view that potentially it could be put elsewhere even though putting it elsewhere may result in service impacts, I think we would be not acting responsibly as an advisory commission to the FCC. I think this is unquestionably routing information and the routing of the services that consumers use it for would work better if it were in the NPAC. You wouldn’t run into the situations Sue described where there’s some gap between the updating of these third party databases and the updating of the information in the NPAC, so I mean to take the view that even though it’s routing 62 information it must be excluded, a separate question of whether as a policy matter it’s good or bad or whatever to put things in the NPAC, but to take the view that it must be excluded even though it’s (unintelligible) information on this theory that it is not strictly necessary for routing, I just think that that is far too narrow a view for this body to take. CHAIRMAN KANE: Let me read what we’re talking about here which is the second report and order, paragraph 99 which FCC orders that the NANC will determine which fields will be necessary. “The information contained in the number portability regional databases”, which is now one database because there aren’t any regional ones anymore, “should be limited to the information necessary to route telephone calls to the appropriate service provider. The NANC should determine the specific information necessary to provide number portability”. I just wanted to be sure what we’re focusing on. MR. LANNING: Jeff Lanning, CenturyLink. I want to follow what XO and AT&T expressed. At the last meeting I articulated a cautionary note about not wanting to have a new proceeding to define telephone call because of the unintended consequences that would like follow. I want to make the same point with regard to necessary. We need I think to be very careful and not be too limiting in our definition of necessary because of unintended consequences. I mean frankly you don’t need SS7 because SS7 isn’t necessary to route a phone call. You can still do it the old fashioned way, you know, yet no one is 63 arguing that we shouldn’t have SS7 type fields in the NPAC database. So we want to join AT&T and Nextel in expressing that as long as it’s routing information that is used and useful, that’s what the FCC means by necessary, necessary to run your business and route phone calls not absolutely necessary, like you can’t route a phone call without it, and if we start allowing these fundamental concepts to be caught up and sort of unduly limited in resolving an important dispute, we will really suffer unintended consequences so let’s not let the dispute swallow much larger and important concepts that are central to all of our businesses and to our customer services. Ultimately this is about customers and it’s hard to understand how a narrow restriction on the definition of necessary is really going to benefit consumers. MALE SPEAKER: (Off microphone, unintelligible). I often speak to groups that aren’t as knowledgeable about numbering as the NANC and its members are in pointing out your Smart phone, my Blackberry will have four or five, six different addresses, no one of them is going to be necessary to route a call or a message to me. Even our phone numbers which go from network to network, they’re directory listings and not the internal device listing. There are IP addresses associated with all of these devices, so it’s really a bit of a fool’s errand to go down the path of putting too much weight on the term what’s necessary when there are so many alternatives for routing and delivering traffic in the current public network. CHAIRMAN KANE: Cindy, you’ve spoken. You have one more thing, go 64 ahead. MS. SHEEHAN: Cindy Sheehan, Comcast. So in response to peoples’ thoughts again, I would say that I think we’re looking at what is the easy answer which is something that already exists versus the right answer, and I think to be a responsible, you know, agency supported by the FCC, we need to look at the right answer versus just what’s the easiest because it could bubble up and impact us later, and is it the right answer for the consumers. I don’t think this has been well vetted out to say that this is the place to go put it and let’s just go put it in the NPAC database. I think there needs to be a lot of things looked at to consider what is the right answer and what is the best answer and I don’t think that we’ve gone through that process. CHAIRMAN KANE: Don Gray. MR. GRAY: Don Gray, Nebraska Public Service Commission. Not going to try to weigh in on the technical merits or efficiencies or any of those, but as staff of a regulatory organization I have to tell you I shudder when I hear comments about well, they really meant, or we need to expand the definition of words that were written 13, 14 years ago. I think Sprint has provided evidence that SMS, MMS may not have even been anything other then someone’s dream in a lab or some experiment that time ago. I don’t disagree that it’s being used now. I don’t disagree that it’s a method of communicating but my concern is that the way the rules were written then, or why 65 we’re sitting here now is because what do they really mean today. And had they written them something to the effect of, you know, the NANC will oversee such and such to affect the best method of communication, then maybe there’s a lot of latitude there for redefinition, for saying well, that means this today. But when they used some very specific terms when they wrote it, it puts us in the position we are in today and I think as Comcast has suggested, there’s easy choices, there’s difficult choices, and the old adage that often it’s a hard path to get to the right choice and we’ve certainly been on a hard path. Will we make it today, I don’t know, but I think we have to recognize that the choice that gets made today could have some long lasting consequences that we just need to be clear about. MS. MILLER: Anna Miller with T-Mobile. Just a couple of comments and a request. First of all in the Sprint/T-Mobile sponsored report in section 4.1.3.1, it talks about the number portability orders that stated that information should be limited to that necessary to route telephone calls to the appropriate service providers. And it points out that -- I guess it gives a better context of that statement because it points out that they were really concerned about having too much information in there associated with 911 services, or customer specific information, or locality specific configurations that would unnecessarily I guess bloat the NPAC. So I just wanted to put that reference up so you have a better understanding of the context of that statement. 66 Also I’d like to comment that we’ve been vetting this for five years, and I don’t know how long is long enough, but I’m hoping we can come to a conclusion. And my request is I’ve been hearing -- I know that there was a lot of collaboration on this Sprint/T-Mobile sponsored report and recommendation. I’ve been hearing a lot of support for it here at the NANC, and I would request that maybe we could take a vote of who supports this recommendation just so we have an idea of if there is a majority that support it. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: I have been keeping track of who is expressing support for it, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, XO, AT&T, CenturyLink, and CTIA, U.S. Telecom and Qwest. Excuse me, OPASTCO. Is there anyone else? Yes, go ahead. MS. REIDY: Karen Reidy. This is CompTel. We support the Sprint/T- Mobile proposal. CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes, CompTel, okay. Is there anyone else on the phone with a view? Okay, I have the names and the numbers. We don’t need to put it to a vote. MS. GAUGLER: Tiki Gaugler, XO Communications. I just wanted to respond to the comments about whether this is the easy or the right scenario. As Anna just said, we’ve been vetting this for years and so the fact that, the suggestion that this isn’t the right solution because it hasn’t been properly vetted I think is incorrect. This has gone through the process and as is in this statement, the majority, the vast majority of the industry has agreed this is the right response, and I don’t 67 think it’s the easy response. When it comes to going through the SOW process and doing (unintelligible) offer a change, I don’t think that anyone in the industry said hey, this is the easy one. Let’s go through this whole software change and develop the software because this is easy. That’s a long process. It involves money exchanging so I don’t think it was the least cost or the easiest way in that sense. Also I think the argument in terms of what the FCC intended when it used the word necessary, again we could go back and forth on that however, the point is that any one of these fields could arguably not be necessary because we could put it in another database so I think the argument that it has to be necessary because it can’t be somewhere else just does not hold water here. And really as they pointed out and as in the paper, the point was that it be necessary for routing, that this be routing information for the porting database and not that this be strictly necessary, that it can’t be somewhere else, and so I will defer to -- CHAIRMAN KANE: Public comment. We don’t have a public microphone back there so if anyone from the public wants to speak come up here. MR. NAKAHATA: John Nakahata on behalf of Telcordia. I guess I wanted to make a couple different comments. First of all I guess I take umbrage at the suggestion that this was trumped up. I don’t think that’s a proper assertion, and I don’t think that type of ad hominem accusation is in order. From Telcordia’s perspective this was about following the rules. The rules 68 say NANC shall determine what fields are necessary, that determination has never been -- consensus on that has never been reached in the five years that this has been talked about. It came back. The FCC directed the industry -- said the industry could reconsider it as the appendix into the NCTA, Comcast, and Cox alternate report shows, which is the minutes from the February 2008 NANC meeting, what reconsideration meant was discussed at the NANC, and it was expressly discussed that policy issues very well should come back to the NANC. I think there’s little doubt as this discussion shows that there are policy issues involved here. You know, yes, why is Telcordia interested in this? Yes, because this information can be put in separate databases because the NPAC is as structured today, a single provider monopoly database paid for by an assessment on every telecommunications carrier that then gets collected from telecommunications users across the country. That means that there’s no competition once the NPAC is selected for providing services that are within the NPAC. There’s a policy issue there. There’s a consumer protection issue there, and all of that should inform the FCC’s consideration as I think (unintelligible) up here of what necessary means in 52.25F. So this has been a great discussion about what necessary perhaps should mean, but the process issue is this is exactly the discussion that should have occurred before these fields were implemented in the NPAC. Now as to timing, remember this discussion came up in February of 2008. 69 LNPA Working Group went back. Telcordia objected, brought its objections and filed its complaint in April of 2009, the same time that NAPM was moving to adopt the contractual provisions. There was another NANC meeting in I think it was July of 2009. Had the proper process been followed there could have been a preparation of reports and an airing of the type of discussion we’re having here today at that time, but the proper process wasn’t followed, so the record wasn’t developed to do that and it wasn’t enabled to happen. The rules on the process are there for a reason and so the fact that there is no consensus, these really should not have -- this debate should have happened and whether or not there was a consensus should have been determined before these fields were actually put into the NPAC database. Instead when Telcordia brought a standstill request to the FCC saying hey, freeze the -- asked that the process be held until NANC makes a decision, all the people around the table who have said that this has been debated too long said don’t, go ahead and move (unintelligible) and FCC don’t freeze it, don’t create a standstill on the process. So process wasn’t followed. The debate wasn’t had at the right time. I think there is still a very live debate over what constitutes -- how necessity in the rules should be interpreted. Obviously we have a strong view on that but I’m not going to belabor that. But the bottom line is rules weren’t followed, processes weren’t followed, and that means these fields shouldn’t be in the database. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, just a couple more comments, and then, we’ll 70 wind this up. Cindy. MS. SHEEHAN: Cindy Sheehan, Comcast. I just wanted to share that in addition as our telecommunications industry continues to grow as I was sharing before, I think there are going to be devices, means of communication that are beyond what even exist in the industry today, and I would have to ask where does it stop, and so I think we need to make sure that we have a process. When I say where does it stop, where does it stop that we don’t just keep adding things to the NPAC database. Where do we actually sit down and define what is best for the industry as we are growing and to insure that we have the right process to move our industry forward in a positive manner that benefits not only the service providers but also the customers, and the vendors, and everyone involved. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, one more public comment. MR. NAVIN: Tom Navin, Counsel for NeuStar. I agree with John that I don’t think there’s any place for ad hominem attacks here, which is why I was a little surprised at your characterization of NeuStar as some monopoly provider given that they won a competitive bid to be in the position of the administrator of the NPAC. In response to Mr. Gray’s comments about whether this body should take an original intent approach or whether it should take a more flexible approach to the language of the rule that includes the terms telephone call and necessary in the body of the rule, it really doesn’t matter because in 1996 when this rule was adopted the Commission used a pre ‘96 act term, telephone call. 71 Telephone call in a pre ‘96 act since could refer to data, it could refer to voice. So don’t be confused that somehow the Commission adopted a stilted or restricted definition or approach by using the term telephone call. Secondly as it relates to the term necessary, in the post ‘96 act context the Commission used the term necessary to mean useful. That is in fact what the Commission told the Supreme Count in the Iowa Utility Board case so don’t be confused about what the terms mean as originally intended. I think that there are strong arguments that they were originally intended to be fairly flexible however this is a circumstance where you have fairly direct authority on point. You have the Commission making pronouncements not only about its view of what the LNP database should embody, but they also interpret Congress’ intent, and I’d like to quote because perhaps you’ve read, perhaps you have not, the Commission in its LNP order says “Further to insure the consumers retain this benefit as technology evolves, we continue to believe that Congress’ intent that number portability be a dynamic concept that accommodates such changes. The Commission previously has found that it has the authority to alter the scope of porting obligations due to technological changes in how numbers are ported. Simile, act provides ample authority for the logical extension of porting obligations due to technological changes in how telephone service is provided to end user customers”. So this isn’t really even a close call in terms of what the Commission, the 72 five commissioners expect as it relates to LNP and how they interpret Congress’ intent with regard to the LNP database being a dynamic database, and as I’m sure you’re well aware, the Commission has over the past ten years, over the past 16 years, continually evolved its regulations where it has needed to. This is a case where it doesn’t need to. It does not need to pass a new rule because the rule that currently applies in this circumstance allows the NANC through a consensus process to add the information that would be included by the addition of the fields so I don’t think that’s open to debate about what would be the most consistent approach with the Commission’s intent. And with regard to the process, the process will question whether it’s right or wrong and I think that the characterization is incorrect and I don’t think there’s agreement that the correct process -- I think that you originally suggested that everyone agrees that the right process was not followed and I don’t think that’s true at all because as I understand it, the LNP, a Working Group often times adopts proposals to advance the work of the NANC but only doing so by informing the NANC of what it is doing. So whether it’s an explicit endorsement or an implicit endorsement, you know, that is something that if you wanted to take that issue up you would be able to do so however here you don’t have to get mired in that procedural issue because the full NANC has the opportunity to decide the substantive issue at hand. So for that reason I think that the NANC should move forward and try to reach consensus. I think the Commission, having been a former Bureau Chief, 73 certainly the Bureau and the Commission rely heavily on this body to be able to reach consensus and it’s everyone’s interest, in the Commission and the industry for this body to reach consensus. And I encourage you to do everything you can today in going forward to reach consensus on this issue and we believe that the Telcordia dispute should be dismissed and that the cloud over the URIs should be finally clear. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, thank you. I believe you misinterpreted what I said. I said that I believe that everyone agreed that the NANC itself had not yet made a determination whether or not these URIs were necessary to route telephone calls to the appropriate service provider, and the NANC itself had not yet determined the specific information necessary to provide number portability. This reminds me a little bit of the previous discussion we had on the contract for the RFP and contract renewal process where there may have been a habit, or an acquiescence, or an assumption that by delegating something that that substituted for NANC approval. And I think we do need to be very careful as long as I’m Chairman going forward that when things are delegated, that the delegation is clear and that a requirement where it’s required I believe by FCC rules that the NANC give approval, that that step is also taken, not simply an informational one. But this issue is before the NANC now and in the interest of everyone no longer getting stuck in the snow, I’m going to report to the FCC that a majority of the members of the NANC based on the discussion do believe that these are 74 necessary, that a significant minority do not believe that they are necessary. I would not call that consensus. Consensus is a little fluid thing. I think there’s too much of a split but there is a substantial majority that believe it, there is a significant disagreement with that majority, and I shall report to the FCC. I mentioned three documents under item 10 and I will mark the original report from the Telcordia Dispute Team which I don’t think you have another copy of it, as 10, the recommendation from NCTA, Comcast, and Cox as 10A, and the recommended report from Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile as 10B. STATUS OF THE INDUSTRY NUMBERING COMMITTEE (INC) ACTIVITIES All right number 11, the status of Industry Numbering Committee, the INC Activities Report. MS. MCNAMER: Good afternoon. We have our Industry Numbering Committee report. I don’t know if you numbered it, I’m sorry. CHAIRMAN KANE: The INC Report is number 11. MS. MCNAMER: My name is Natalie McNamer with T-Mobile. I am the new INC Chair along with Dana Crandall from Verizon Wireless who is the INC Vice Chair. The first thing I’d like to start out with today is to let everyone know that the INC would like to thank Adam Newman from Telcordia for his many, many, many years of participation and especially for his leadership at the INC. Adam recent resigned his position as INC Chair. I was Vice Chair and now 75 I’ve become Chair and Dana has joined as Vice Chair. So the INC wants to make sure that they thank Adam for his long time and his recollections on so many things that helped the INC move forward. Since our last NANC meeting the INC has held one interim meeting and a virtual meeting. Our next INC meeting will be March 1st through the 3rd in Irving, Texas. Details on all of our future meetings can be found on the ATIS website. The one issue that we wanted to discuss in detail with the NANC today was from the RAM subcommittee which is the Resource Assignment and Management subcommittee. It is issue 604. The title is Edits to the NRUF Guidelines to Address Categorization of Numbers Subject to the Service Member Civil Relief Act. On October 13, 2010, the President signed the Veterans Benefits Act of 2010, increasing the scope of the existing Service Member Civil Relief Act of 2003. Under the revised act when a service member terminates a telephone service contract as a result of a military relocation and the service member’s relocation is for three years or less, the service provider must retain the service member’s telephone number in the event that this service member re-subscribes to the service during the 90 day period after their relocation has ended. This retention of telephone numbers does not fit into any of the existing numbering category definitions used to NRUF and for the months to exhaust utilization calculations so the issue was brought to INC. The INC has added text to the NRUF guidelines indicating that although not an FCC designated subcategory of assigned numbers, retained numbers complying 76 with the Service Members Civil Relief Act shall be categorized as assigned numbers, interact as a separate subcategory. INC also added a definition of numbers retained per the Service Members Civil Relief Act to our NRUF guidelines glossary. An advantage of using the assigned numbers category for these numbers is that it protects the numbers from inadvertent reassignment or a snap back in a ported scenario. The INC is requesting the NANC concurrence with the assigned number category for this purpose and is requesting that the NANC notify the FCC of such action. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, we’ve got a request. Is there any discussion of that request? Don Gray. MR. GRAY: Don Gray, Nebraska Public Service Commission. You indicate assigned numbers and tracked as a separate subcategory. So tracked by the individual carrier? MS. MCNAMER: By the service provider. MR. GRAY: By the service provider. MS. MCNAMER: Right. Currently there is a table in the NRUF guidelines that shows all the different categories and such numbers used for intermittent use is not a designated FCC subcategory but it’s instructed that service provider shall track that separately also. MR. GRAY: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Any other questions? Okay, we have before us, very 77 clear on the record, a request that the NANC approve this recommendation. Is there any objection? Rules by unanimous consent, we approve it and I will forward that recommendation to the FCC. Thank you very much. MS. MCNAMER: Thank you. On page five of our presentation we show that we have one issue that is remaining in initial pending and that is the development of the pANI guidelines. Since the letter from two days ago to the RNA to submit the new change order for the pANI’s, this will be able to come off of our list after change order implementation. And then we just have the one issue in initial pending which is waiting for a change order approval by the FCC and implementation. It’s a minor change order that is only text changes. And then on page seven we show that the issue 704 is in initial closure and I won’t go through -- on eight we have all the issues that we have put into initial closure since our last NANC meeting. The last page is relevant INC web pages. Are there any questions? CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you very much for your work. MS. MCNAMER: Thank you. REPORT OF THE FUTURE OF NUMBERING WORKING GROUP (FoN WG) CHAIRMAN KANE: And our final report, the Future of Numbering Working Group, and we will mark your report as Exhibit 12. MR. NEWMAN: Good morning, Adam Newman, Telcordia 78 Technologies. I’m one of the three Co-Chairs of the Future of Numbering Working Group along with Mr. Gray from Nebraska and Jim Castagna from Verizon. And apparently just because I didn’t do the INC report for the first time in a long time, I had to do another report. So since our last report to the NANC where the NANC approved the white paper on property rights and toll free numbers for distribution, the Co-Chairs had prepared a transmittal letter to send the transmittal letter out and the paper out for comment and there was some miscommunication between the Co-Chairs of the FoN and the Chairman of the NANC with regard to who was actually going to send it. So it’s been determined since that the Co-Chairs of the FoN will perform that actual distribution and we’ll be doing that shortly. We will edit the requested comment date to match the same interval as was originally being provided for based on when we do transmit that letter to all NANC members for comment. CHAIRMAN KANE: And that will be going out after the holidays most likely? MR. NEWMAN: I could see us doing it sooner. CHAIRMAN KANE: Sooner, but with a response date near the end of January? MR. NEWMAN: Sounds right. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, good. MR. NEWMAN: Questions? I knew you had one, David. (LAUGHTER) 79 MALE SPEAKER: My question is will it then be the Tri-Chairs of the FoN or the FoN group itself that will determine who outside of the NANC will receive the copy of the white paper for comment, and in what form and content will the comments be taken in and tallied or reported back to the NANC? MR. NEWMAN: So thanks for the question, David. There has been some as you know because we’ve had discussions with you and email, There’s been some discussion as to what the NANC expects from us in this regard. The Co-Chairs knew to distribute it to the NANC itself and it would have been my expectation as one of the three Co-Chairs expectations, that NANC members could then themselves distribute it further to parties that they think are interested for comment. So we have association members or yourself as one of the interested parties from a toll free perspective, could then further distribute it for comment. I think and I don’t have it in front of me I’m sorry to say, I think the cover letter suggests that the comments should be sent back to the NANC as opposed to the Future of Numbering Working Group itself. So it currently stands those comments in any form, there was no form suggested, would come back to the NANC, presumably Chairman Kane, and then the NANC would decide what to do with them, whether to task the FoN to review them and prepare something on them or to do something itself is my current understanding. That doesn’t mean it can’t change with an action item here. CHAIRMAN KANE: It would be my intention those comments come back, 80 gather them, send them to the FoN but also share them with the NANC. We will have them come back to one central point but we would encourage you when you get the white paper which will come electronically also, to send it out, to redistribute. I think that’s the best way, networking, to get it out to as wide a group as possible and also perhaps the media. Any other questions? Thank you. MR. NEWMAN: The rest of my report is large. There’s a thank you, and then there’s some backup. So just as an FYI, on page six in the backup slides we do have a number of other issues that have been submitted and accepted, and we haven’t done a whole lot of active work on. I do think we will scheduling a meeting in the first quarter of 2011 to get an update on this issues and any potential path forward with regard to these issues. That’s all I have. CHAIRMAN KANE: Thank you. That concludes the agenized items. Summary of action items, we’ve got two. We will do a report. I will report to the FCC on the results of the Telcordia consideration of that dispute, and we will forward to the FCC the recommendation of the NANC on the Service Member Act. We’ve had public comment. Is there anyone else from the public who wishes to make a comment? Okay, other business. Marilyn Jones. MS. JONES: Marilyn Jones, FCC. The Wireline Competition Bureau hasn’t had an opportunity to review the 2011 NANC meeting dates. I’ll send an email once the dates are approved. CHAIRMAN KANE: That’s my other one. It’s a Verizon wireless too. (LAUGHTER) 81 And it was in Spanish I know that. Shouldn’t lean on the thing, I’m sorry. MS. JONES: This is Marilyn Jones from the FCC. Chairman Kane has submitted proposed dates for 2011 NANC meetings, and they are still with the Wireline Competition Bureau for approval. As soon as we get those approved, working with Chairman Kane, Debbie will distribute them to the NANC members. CHAIRMAN KANE: Right, but we’re looking at, generally what I’m suggesting is that we would meet in February, May, September, and December and generally the second Thursday of each of those months except that in February because of the FCC meeting we would be looking at possibly a Friday. And as soon as we get those cleared, we want to obviously avoid -- this is the room that everybody uses for all their meetings, to try to get that out to you as soon as possible. Any other business? Anna. MS. MILLER: Anna Miller, T-Mobile. I may have missed it under the action items but I think there was an action item to send to the NANC distribution the updated INC guidelines on the government entity definition for the pANI guidelines. CHAIRMAN KANE: Yes, correct, the pANI. Look at the things that were on the agenda but that was added in and that will be sent out I believe -- MS. JONES: Debbie sent those out during the break. CHAIRMAN KANE: During the break, they’ve been done. So that’s an action item we could cross off as that’s been done. 82 MS. MILLER: Great, thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: That’s already been done, the pANI information has been sent out to all the members. A question, yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you when I asked for public comment. Go ahead. Identify yourself. MR. HEPBURN: Christopher Hepburn with Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. At the last meeting Pennsylvania was here again, and we had asked if NANC was going to -- would take in consideration the OCN of carriers carrying more than one OCN and then working and getting numbers under each of these OCNs, and Pennsylvania’s experience has been used to go around the FCC’s 75 percent utilization in rate centers. Pennsylvania is very interested in having NANC take this up as an action item of some sort. We are somewhat new to the arena here, so we didn’t know if we needed to file something or if we can just simply request it. CHAIRMAN KANE: I believe requesting it here at the meeting is certainly adequate. Marilyn, which Working Group would be the appropriate one to send this matter to? MS. JONES: I’m not sure. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, well I will consult, and we will send it to the appropriate -- you’re volunteering, the INC, all right. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me of that. I will take that as an action item, and I will send it to the INC Working group and they’ll work -- go ahead. MR. HEPBURN: We had already gone to INC, and they said they could 83 not help us. CHAIRMAN KANE: They said they could not help you? MR. HEPBURN: They could not change in the INC guidelines or anything like that so it would have to be beyond that. CHAIRMAN KANE: Come up on the record, please. MS. MCNAMER: Natalie McNamer, T-Mobile and the INC Chair. The INC had looked at the issue from an INC only perspective, but if we receive an action item from the NANC the INC can work with the other ATIS groups to try to find a resolution. It’s the protocol. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, and now it is an action item from the Chair to you, and then I will talk with you about setting a timeline for getting the report and recommendation back to us. Thank you very much. MR. HEPBURN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KANE: Okay, anything else? Okay, it says adjourn no later than 5:00 p.m. and it is just 12:40 p.m. Drive carefully, walk carefully, fly carefully, and hopefully we will see you the second or third week in February. (Meeting Adjourned) (END OF AUDIO CD) * * * * * 84 CERTIFICATE OF AGENCY I, Carol J. Schwartz, President of Carol J. Thomas Stenotype Reporting Services, Inc., do hereby certify we were authorized to transcribe the submitted audio CD, and that thereafter these proceedings were transcribed under our supervision, and I further certify that the forgoing transcription contains a full, true and correct transcription of the audio CD furnished, to the best of our ability. _____________________________ CAROL J. SCHWARTZ PRESIDENT ON THIS DATE OF: ______________________________