Number Portability Best Practices

The members of the Number Portability Industry Forum (NPIF) formerly known as Local Number Portability Administration Working Group (LNPA WG) have created "Best Practices" for porting between and within telephony carriers. These Best Practices have not been mandated entirely, and in many cases are considered a gentleman's agreement on porting between carriers. However, many of the Best Practices were presented to the North American Number Council (NANC) for approval and, after NANC's approval, forwarded on to the FCC. Several of these Best Practices are flagged with asterisks to indicate which have been endorsed by the NANC (*) and which have been adopted by the FCC(**).

The Best Practices reflect the consensus of the NPIF regarding the preferred processes for porting. The NPIF meetings are open to all telephony carriers. Anyone attending the meetings may bring a suggested Best Practice to the group for discussion and possible inclusion in these approved Best Practices. The NPIF periodically reviews the Best Practices to determine whether each remains applicable to the current porting environment. Based on these reviews, a practice may be modified or deleted. If a Best Practice is deleted, the number of the Best Practice remains on the web site with the explanation that it was deleted.

Please Note: Best Practices 001 - 044 were developed and agreed to by the Wireless Number Portability Operations (WNPO) team.

The following is an index of the existing Number Portability Best Practices. Click on the download button for more detail.