Georgetown 1 Ballroom Washington Marriott 22nd and M Streets Washington, DC

LNPA – WG: Tuesday Sept 12, 1:00 – 5:00pm Bridge: 847-413-3181, code 6700973#

Attendance:

Name Company Name Company
James Grasser Ameritech Cellular Jim Alton SBC
H.L. Gowda AT&T Stephanie Swanson Sprint
Beth Watkins AT&T Colleen Collard Tekelec
Cindy Sheehan AT&T Broadband John P. Malyar Telcordia Technologies
Dominic Choi AT&T Wireless Brian Mordecai Telcordia Technologies
Ron Steen BellSouth Jean Anthony Telecom Software Enterprises
Anna Miller BellSouth Cellular Robin Gains Telecom Software Enterprises
Marian Hearn Canadian LNP Consortium Sherrian Lively TriVergent
Richard Bartel Communications Venture Servcs Jean Ann Fuller TriVergent
Ron Stutheit Evolving Systems, Inc. Gary Sacra Verizon (Bell Atlantic)
Mike Panis Evolving Systems, Inc. Dave Marshall Verizon (Bell Atlantic)
Maggie Lee ILLUMINET Richard Bell Verizon (GTE)
Gene Perez Intermedia Bob Angevine Verizon (GTE)
Rick Jones NENA Pascale Lacroix Videotron Telecom (1998)
Marcel Champagne Neustar Rich Lenox Williams
Gustavo Hannecke Neustar Lana Swalls Williams
Rick Hausman Nextel wireless Eleanor Willis-Camara Winstar
Noreen McElhone Nextel wireless Steve Addicks WorldCom
Jamie Sharpe Nextlink John Hayes WorldCom
Dave Garner Quest / US West Suzel Wyvill-Jones WorldCom
Charles Ryburn SBC Molly Dorsey WorldCom

Review of August Minutes:

The August minutes fail to note a change made to the July minutes. The statement "Verizon’s operational experience in the Northeast region is that they are successfully using the OBF reseller process flows" was changed to read "experience in the Northeast and MidAtlantic regions."

Last page: The discussion of the NPAC region border issue in Kentucky inaccurately captures Brian Egbert and John Malyar’s comments. The inaccurate statements were deleted from the August minutes.

NPA boundaries are limited to state borders, but the NPAC region boundaries deviate from state boundaries in northern Kentucky. Apparently there has been confusion amongst some service providers regarding which NPAC region to open NPA-NXXs. This issue has been referred to the NPAC cross regional team. We will ask them to inform us of what the actual NPAC boundary is.

Wireless Number Portability Subcommittee Readout:

The WNPSC’s minutes will be distributed separately.

Anna Miller asked for thirty minutes on the agenda at the October LNPA meeting for Paul Gerth to present the Wireless Test Plan.

Slowhorse Subcommittee Readout:

The slowhorse minutes will be distributed separately.

PIM-1:

Representatives of the NNPO will present the PIM-1 flows and issues to the OBF. This issue is on the OBF agenda for the 13th.

PIM-5:

Inadvertent Porting, when customer’s old service provider cannot contact the company who performed the inadvertent port. Dave Heath will prepare a statement of work on this issue to take to the LLCs at their 9/28 meeting.

PIM-6:

PIM-6 was referred to NENA. NENA is discussing whether the entire record migration process should be turned over to the control of the NSP. NENA rep’s were instructed to go back to their companies and come back with comments and positions.

PIMs - New:

Richard Bartel, Communications Ventures Services asked how to bring a new PIM to the LNPA. A description of the PIM process is available on the LNPA website. NANPA has assigned 555 numbers to end users (about 7000 TNs). Communications Ventures thinks these numbers should be portable, but has not been able to port them. After a brief discussion of whether 555 exchanges are portable, the LNPA asked Richard to write up a description of the problem for discussion at the next meeting.

There should be a list of non-portable NXXs on the NANC webpage.

NPAC 3.0 Testing Status:

Testing was suspended last week due to problems with the test platform. After 6 weeks testing, the test platform has never been stable. Even though many SPs have completed test cases, there is concern that regression testing is required. One concern is the manual work performed in the NPAC to clean up database corruption between test cases.

We do not seem to have objective criteria for "system stability". We have not made it through a week without a system crash. We do not want to get through all the test cases with a system that crashes repeatedly and go into production because there are no sev 1 or sev 2 defects logged.

On the weekly testing call on Thursday 9/14 the NPAC will make an assessment of whether the system is ready to go to group testing.

Some SPs expressed concern with the defect tracking by Neustar: In many cases Neustar is not providing a description of how problems are resolved. Also, all defects seem to be opened as severity 3s when providers think they should have a higher severity. (A severity 3 is a "cosmetic" defect.)

References to "database" refer to the OODB (object oriented data base). References to "application" refer to the ESI programming.

The LNPA Listed Their 3.0 Testing Concerns: (to forward to the PEs to take to the LLCs)

LNPA is concerned that all service providers need to participate in group testing because we moved many of the test cases out of the individual SP testing into group testing. Additionally, since the current stability problems seem to be load related, we want a full suite of SPs included in the group test.

T1S1 Request for Review of TR 57:

The LNPA noted the need to replace NANC T&O with LNPA working group in the TR-57 document.

Wed Sept 13, 8:30 – 5:00pm Bridge: 847-413-3181, code 6703973#

Attendance:

Name Company Name Company
James Grasser Ameritech Cellular Colleen Collard Tekelec
H.L. Gowda AT&T John P. Malyar Telcordia Technologies
Beth Watkins AT&T Brian Mordecai Telcordia Technologies
Cindy Sheehan AT&T Broadband Jean Anthony Telecom Software Enterprises
Dominic Choi AT&T Wireless Robin Gains Telecom Software Enterprises
Ron Steen BellSouth Sherrian Lively TriVergent
Marian Hearn Canadian LNP Consortium Jean Ann Fuller TriVergent
Mike Panis Evolving Systems, Inc. Gary Sacra Verizon (Bell Atlantic)
Maggie Lee ILLUMINET Dave Marshall Verizon (Bell Atlantic)
Rick Jones NENA Richard Bell Verizon (GTE)
Marcel Champagne Neustar Bob Angevine Verizon (GTE)
Gustavo Hannecke Neustar Pascale Lacroix Videotron Telecom
Rick Hausman Nextel wireless Rich Lenox Williams
Noreen McElhone Nextel wireless Lana Swalls Williams
Jamie Sharpe Nextlink Eleanor Willis-Camara Winstar
Dave Garner Quest / US West Steve Addicks WorldCom
Charles Ryburn SBC John Hayes WorldCom
Jim Alton SBC Suzel Wyvill-Jones WorldCom
Stephanie Swanson Sprint Molly Dorsey WorldCom
Brian Egbert Sprint PCS

NANC 219 Changes &:

Revisions to NANC 219 were reviewed on our conference call on 8/31. There were no additional comments on 219 at this meeting. Jean will send out a copy tonight. Updated NANC 249 and 219 will be taken to the LLC in September.

Changes to NANC Change Order Summary Document:

Discussed the difference between the change order categories "Closed, No Action" and "Deleted" status. Change orders that are in "Cancel Pending" are moved to either Closed No Action or Deleted status. After discussion we agreed that change orders that are accepted and later rejected should be moved to "Deleted". It was suggested that "Closed No Action" may be for proposed change orders that are never accepted.

NANC 87, NANC 103, & 122 will be moved to deleted.

We will leave NANC 316 in the open category, and add more information on the ASN.1 structure. The actual problem was corrected as a defect in NPAC release 3.0. NANC 315 will change the documentation to match the implementation. Change order 316 will change the interface at both the LSMS and NPAC to reduce the number of bits.

We discussed a left over action item from NANC 122: The default value for the key change interval is 360 days, do we need to change it? No one requested a change for the interval.

Release 5 Requirements:

NANC 310 – Change the time reference in the NPAC from GMT to Central Standard Time (Network Time). There are several options for changing it. The original plan was to change the operation of NPAC so that it makes decisions and stores information in CST. We discussed and evaluated the following options:

    1. Change the NPAC database to operate in CST and the local systems to CST.
    2. Change the NPAC to CST internally, but send time across the interface in GMT so we do not need to change the local systems.
    3. Leave the database in GMT and the system interface in GMT, but allow the local systems to interface with the users in CST (status quo, current implementation.)
    4. Change the NPAC so that decisions, which are made based on date, are made based on a date change at midnight CST. The NPAC will continue to store data in GMT and the interfaces will continue exchange information in GMT.

The motivation for this change is to solve some of the current confusion regarding the date for users operating in CST. Split processing is one of the situations where this confusion has caused problems.

The disadvantage with option 1 is that it requires coordinated changes to all the local systems, conversion of embedded data, and is not backward compatible.

The LNPA decided to choose option 4. This option will address the operational issues but will not require any changes to the local systems and will not require conversion of the embedded data.

NANC 169 – All of the time references will be changed to GMT. We will add a note to NANC 310 that we may need to revisit some of the time references in 169, depending on how 310 is implemented.

NANC 300 – Add a sentence to the Business Need referring to the INC guidelines and explaining that we need to be able to modify the SVs of type POOL because TNs can be assigned one day after activation.

Removed the question: "Does this functionality need to go down to the specific TN level?" The functionality only needs to be available for blocks.

Change "current SPID" to "blockholder SPID" in requirement 2.

New Requirement: We need two sets of reports; a "Requesting SPID report", and a "Resend Excluded SP report". Requirements 4-7 below apply to the requesting SPID report.

Req’s 4 & 5: Change the report name to the "Requesting SPID Report".

Req 5: Change to Block ID / SV ID.

Req 6: Change current SPID to TN / current SPID.

Req 7: Change current SPID to current SPID / blockholder SPID;

Change NPA-NXX-X to TN / NPA-NXX-X

Resend Excluded Service Provider report will contain similar information:

Req’s 8 - 9: Similar to reqmts 5-7 but for the Resend Excluded SP report.

AI: All, Think about what reporting requirements your company needs for NANC 300 and be prepared to discuss at the next meeting.

NANC 311 – Significant discussion is needed on 311, and we are out of time on the agenda.

NANC 227 – Jean will e-mail out a summary of the changes to NANC 227.

Change Order Path Forward – We will pick up with the end of NANC 300 at the next meeting then move forward with the change orders we did not get to before we revisit the changes reviewed today.

Proposal to Change The Sequence of Topics in the Agenda: – Brian Egbert suggested if we discuss the change orders either as the last item on the agenda for LNPA meetings, we can trim the group down to those concerned with the change order subject. Alternatively, we could create a separate subcommittee to address change orders. Perhaps these proposals would foster the participation of more subject matter experts.

Many LNPA members feel that change orders are one of the two key functions of the LNPA. (The other function being the PIM process.) They feel it is important to accomplish these primary functions prior to other topics. While many of the business operations representatives agree that they do not speak often during the detailed technical discussions, they feel they need to listen and be sure the technical implementation meets the business need.

Motion by Ron Steen, seconded by Eleanor Willis-Camara: Leave change orders in their current position on the agenda; following minutes review and PIMs. Typically this will result in a hard start on Wednesday mornings for change order review.

Vote: In Favor: 15 voting members; Opposed: 1 voting member; Motion carried

2:00 pm Wireless Wireline 3rd Report:

The first item on the report agenda is to work on the report recommendations.

It was noted that there is only one wireless company representative at the meeting and that this is a scheduled 2:00 pm hard start to discuss the wireless wireline integration. Brian Egbert stated that he is present to represent Sprint PCS, not the entire wireless industry.

Reviewed the change bars in the mark-up from our 8/28 conference call on the report. These minutes do not capture the change bar changes, only additional changes agreed to today.

Modified language stating Wireless portability is currently mandated only in the United States and not Canada.

Cleaned up the language on 911 issues. Changed the references to E911 to 911. In the section 1.3 we clarified the language to show that there are two new issues; one regarding 911-address location and a billing issue.

We discussed how to deal with the redundancy between sections 3.1 and 3.2. Some members felt that section 3.1.2 discusses porting intervals while section 3.2 discusses the process.

We will remove the discussion of dual (mixed) service from section 3.3.4 and replace it with an explanation of how shortening the porting interval affects our ability to get the ten digit trigger applied.

We deleted section 3.3.5, Timer Changes.

Recommendations – Section 4.4, LNPA recommendation:

The LNPA Chairperson asked: Do any of the representatives at this meeting feel their company can reduce the wireline-wireline porting interval at this time? None of representatives present responded positively.

The working group drafted language summarizing their belief that it is not feasible to shorten the porting interval.

Wed Sept 13, 8:30 – 5:00pm Bridge: 847-413-3181, code 6708983#

Attendance:

Name Company Name Company
H.L. Gowda AT&T Jim Alton SBC
Cindy Sheehan AT&T Broadband Stephanie Swanson Sprint
Ron Steen BellSouth Brian Egbert Sprint PCS
Marian Hearn Canadian LNP Consortium Jean Anthony Telecom Software Enterprises
Mike Panis Evolving Systems, Inc. Gary Sacra Verizon (Bell Atlantic)
Maggie Lee ILLUMINET Richard Bell Verizon (GTE)
Rick Jones NENA Bob Angevine Verizon (GTE)
Marcel Champagne Neustar Rich Lenox Williams
Gustavo Hannecke Neustar Lana Swalls Williams
Jamie Sharpe Nextlink Eleanor Willis-Camara Winstar
Dave Garner Quest / US West Steve Addicks WorldCom
Charles Ryburn SBC Molly Dorsey WorldCom

NENA Led Discussion on Impacts of Mixed Service:

Since the 2nd report a new issue with the Lucent ALISA system used by Verizon and SBC in the Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell, and Southwestern Bell territories has come to light. Additionally a separate issue with Bell South’s Nortel 911 platform has been identified. NENA has only received responses from Nortel and Lucent regarding data base operation with mixed services and is waiting for responses from the other vendors. NENA feels that these problems can be solved, but NENA can not support mixed service until these issues are resolved.

Currently the Nortel platform will display the wireline record anytime there are both wireless and wireline records in the database. This means the wireline record will be displayed even after NPAC activation and after the wireline service has been disconnected unless the wireline 911 record is deleted from the database.

We reviewed the nature of the Lucent platform issue. When a wireless 911 call is originated, a temporary record is created in the Lucent 911 database. Currently that temporary record is retained for four hours, but the persistency of the record is tunable. When the wireless record is active in the database, the wireless record will be sent to the PSAP even if the call is originated from the wireline phone. Several LNPA members noted that delivery of an incorrect record to the PSAP because of this issue requires an improbable scenario. It will only occur if first a 911 call is originated by the wireless handset, then before the tunable persistency period expires (currently 4 hours), a call is originated from the wireline phone.

NENA does not feel either of these issues are insurmountable, but they stated that they cannot recommend mixed service until these issues have been resolved.

LNPA Recommendation on Mixed Service:

In the 2nd report we stated that there were 911 issues with mixed service. We were asked by NANC and the FCC to consult with NENA on these issues. At first, NENA responded that although problems exist, they did not see them as "show-stoppers". Since that time, new issues with mixed service have been identified. NENA no longer can recommend that mixed service be allowed until these new issues are resolved. Additionally many of the members of LNPA are concerned with the potential liability issues associated with mixed service. It was suggested that the legal liability issue be referred to the NANC LEWG (Legal Expertise Working Group).

The liability issue with mixed service was compared with a similar situation with 911 calls originated from wireless handsets without a service contract.

It was suggested that we should not send a report listing the Lucent and Nortel 911 database issues until they have an opportunity to respond. The group agreed that vendor names should not be mentioned in the 3rd report, nor should we attempt to provide detailed technical explanations of the 911-database issues in the 3rd report.

NPAC 3.0 Release Testing Status Call:

Defect reports are available on the NPAC secure web site.

Neustar Proposed the Following Entrance Criteria for Group Testing.

Neustar proposed that we push back northeast region group testing for one week at this time. We will see if the system can remain stable next week. Neustar asked if testing parties are willing to plan on shortening the group testing by one week, admitting there is a risk that it can not completed in the reduced time frame.

Nuestar plans to keep super region testing on schedule at this time. Super region turn up testing is scheduled to start on 9/18. Some members expressed concern about the risk that these new SPs will increase the likelihood that the platform will not be stable.

One service provider expressed concern that because the delay in NE region testing will delay their vendor’s software delivery, they will not be able to start super region testing next week.

Neustar defined stability as a system that does not go down or lock up, without a clearly defined cause. One of the SPs asked that we add to that definition that the system must be under load for that week period.

Next Meeting … October 9 – 12, Banff, Alberta – Host Canadian Consortium

November 6 - 9 Intermedia, St. Petersburg FL.

December 11 - 14 Qwest, Phoenix AZ

The LNPA set the following tentative schedule for meetings in 2001

NANC Meetings: LNPA WG: Host:

Jan 16-17 Jan 8 – 11 Nextlink, TBD

Feb 20 - 21 Feb 12 –15 Telcordia, San Diego

March 29 – 21 March 12 – 15 ESI, Denver

April 17 - 18 April 9 – 12 Verizon, Dallas

May 22 - 23 May 14 – 18 Bell South, Atlanta

June 19 - 20 June 11 – 14 Sprint, Kansas City

July July 9 – 12 Canadian Consortium, Toronto

August August 13 - 16 Verizon, Baltimore

September September 10 - 13 AT&T, NY or Seattle

October October 8 – 11 SBC, San Francisco

November November 12 - 15 Neustar, New Orleans

December December 10 – 13 Qwest, Phoenix


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