Number Portability Lookup adds support for landline numbers in North America

June 2011

We are proud to announce that our Number Portability Lookup service now provides a full LNP (Local Number Portability) lookup service for both landline numbers and mobile numbers (MNP) in the United States, Canada, and other countries participating in the NANP / North American Numbering Plan (Country Code 1).

The new service is provided following a recent upgrade of our systems, and a new partnership in the United States.

End users and integrators of our service benefit from still being able to use the same quick and easy API specification as used with our global service, but will now benefit from additional information in the response, including the network code and name of the carrier, and whether the number is a mobile number or a landline (fixed) number.

As a result of this upgrade, we will now be returning the official OCN (Operating Company Number) for each carrier in North America, rather than Mobile Network Codes (MCC+MNC / PLMN codes) as used previously. The OCN code is part of industry standard ATIS 0300251, and provides a unique numbering scheme covering all telephone operators in North America, not just mobile operators.

A full list of OCN numbers is available from its official maintainer, NECA, but for your convenience you'll also see the name of the relevant carrier in the API response.

Whenever a number lookup request is received for a number in country code 1, the OCN, name, and type (mobile/landline) information will be returned. This information provides accurate information on number portability for both landline and mobile numbers, and can even provide a last-known-provider code for disconnected numbers; As such, clients wishing to use our service for number-list cleansing in NANP countries should contact us so we can set up your account to give information only on deliverable numbers.

Our global API service and response format for all other countries remains unchanged, and will continue to return standard PLMN (MCC+MNC) codes as before.

For more information please contact your account manager or submit a support request online.

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