Porting has evolved in the last 25+ years.  10x People has watched early assumptions prove limiting and new use cases arise that were not considered at its inception.  Number portability has come a long way from the “I want to change my carrier but keep my number” days. Take a trip with us down memory lane with a look to the future. 

In the Beginning, there was Wireline

The FCC mandated Number Portability in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  Its purpose was to enable competition in the marketplace and the rise of the CLECs. An NPAC system was implemented in the seven Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) regions.  One for Pacific Bell, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, Bellsouth, US West, Bell Atlantic, and Nynex.  The initial porting volumes were based on the assumption that most of the porting volume would be business customers porting their number ranges, with only 20% being single TN ports.  A rate of 2-TNs per second was calculated to support this volume.  Unexpectedly, single ports quickly became popular as cable companies entered the market, offering consumers the “triple play” of TV, internet, and local home phone service.  This completely upset the range ports assumption. 

Enter the Wireless Carriers

In 2002 the FCC required wireless players to support number portability.  The wireless carriers worked to put a process in place to begin porting in 2003. The number of single ports accelerated as cell phones became a part of everyday life.  Carriers fought for customers by evolving their mobile service plans, including changes from per-minute charges, to tiered buckets of minutes, to unlimited talk time.  Likewise, texting experienced similar pricing patterns (we all remember those news stories of parents seeing $1000+ cell phone bills because their teenagers were racking up charges at 10 cents per text message).

As wireless usage grew more ubiquitous, Intermodal porting, that is, porting between wireless and wireline carriers, became popular as customers began cutting the home phone cord and taking their home phone numbers mobile.  Some consumers wished to keep their home phone, and the cable companies partnered with the wireless carriers to offer the “quad-play” (home phone over coax, TV, internet, and wireless from their wireless partner).  With the increase of the triple play and quad play, the cable companies pushed for a shorter porting interval, and in 2011 the industry adopted the “one-day simple port,” thereby allowing consumers to experience shorter timelines to transition to their TV displaying caller ID information as they were watching the news or a TV show.

Home phone usage, whether traditional copper, coax, or fiber to the home, has continued to decrease year over year as family members, both young and old, have now moved to a mobile device, especially with the introduction of the smartphone.

Network Management via Porting

Porting volumes began to rise as porting was used to perform network grooming/load balancing/routing unrelated to consumers.  Providers could change calling name (CNAM) providers, update new optional fields related to a number, and groom their networks by sending traffic to different LRNs for different switches. 

When consolidations started, porting numbers from disparate networks onto the same network increased volumes.  All four major nationwide wireless providers had acquisitions that resulted in large porting events.  

Want to use my Network?  

In walked the wholesalers who provide networks to other service providers or large business customers.  Not only were large customers moving between carriers, but virtual network providers began buying telephone numbers they could assign. 

DDoS Attack Recovery

With the introduction of cloud-based communications, service providers began using VoIP technology to offer service.  The ability to establish a telephony network quickly gave rise to this new type of provider.  However, like many other things operating over the internet, vulnerabilities were exposed.  Fortunately, VoIP providers under DDoS attacks or having network issues could use porting to change routing.  In our current ecosystem with legacy providers, there is no way to move traffic to respond to this type of event quickly.  LERG changes are distributed at most daily.  Some providers only update their LERG every week, month or quarter. 

What’s next?

The industry has just completed an increased load activity in production (11-TNs per second), the first increase activity in over 10 years, and volume and speed are expected to rise.  This might seem slow in today’s real-time world, but many legacy networks still can’t deal with provisioning at that rate.  Looking forward, porting will continue to evolve to meet industry needs.  VoIP networks will replace legacy networks.  New use cases, such as bifurcation data from voice, will leverage available systems/resources.  There is no end to creativity in the marketplace.  

Have no doubt 10x People will continue to advocate for you, partner with you, and evolve our products to meet your needs!

History info:

• The NPAC supports emerging technologies and is the only number portability system that supports multiple communications technologies in a single repository.
  • 1998—wireline number porting begins
  • 1999—wireline number pooling introduced
  • 2000—intra-carrier pooling for network maintenance began
  • 2002—wireless number pooling implemented; began supporting customer technology migrations
  • 2003—wireless, intermodal (between wireline and wireless), and wireless inter-carrier porting begins
  • 2007—interconnected VoIP porting begins
  • 2010—IP fields implemented
  • 2011—one-day simple port porting required for small carriers

At 10x People, we value the growth of our employees and strive to partner with them and invest together for their future success. It is important for us that we build a strong culture, with a qualified team that loves our company, their job responsibilities and the customers and industry we serve. In almost a decade, we have invested heavily in employee growth and over this year, we have made more of an impact. 

10x People is committed to investing in the future. We understand the importance of building future leaders in telecommunications and technology. We strive to empower their success. We believe by working together we as a community can win as one. Here a few of our success stories:

Tiffany

Starting her Sophomore year at the University of Kentucky. She will continue working part-time with 10x People as her schedule permits. We expect great things from Tiffany in the future. “My 10x People internship has expanded my knowledge of the telecommunication industry, and computer science.  I have worked on a variety of projects and gained experience working with my mentor Talon Marquard who has been patient, willing, and eager to help me learn. Working at 10x People has been a wonderful experience!”  Fun Fact: She is the organization queen.  In addition to her planners and todo lists she has 4 large white boards on her walls and two smaller hand held ones. 

Carter 

Carter is a strong team player on our number management team. We are so excited he joined 10x People after graduation from the University of Kentucky College of Engineer with a BS in Computer Science. He and our CEO, Lisa Marie both bleed Kentucky blue!  He hit the ground running to help supercharge our product development to bring OWL to the market. Carter started with our organization as an intern and we were such a perfect match, he has moved into a full time role.  For exercise, Carter takes his golden retriever puppy, Captain, on runs outside, and is just waiting for when Captain can out-run him.

Sarah 

Returned to the workforce on a “returnship” with us after a very successful job as a parent-in-charge of three children.  It didn’t take us long to know that she was a perfect permanent hire for our team! She has been a key player in working with our customers and the development team to make OWL, our SaaS number ordering system, a reality. Sarah keeps work life balance skiing, hiking, biking and playing tennis.  Her twins are off to college this year but will be busy with her eighth grader.

Sydney 

Sydney is a Data Analyst in Fraud Prevention with a 10x People partner. Sydney graduated from Colgate University with a BA in Mathmatics.  Her time at 10x People gave her the computer basics she needed to support her work in Data Analytics.  Now that Sydney no longer plays college soccer she can mix skiing and running to keep a good work life balance. 

Thankful for Growth and Investment 

We appreciate all of the hard work each of these individuals has contributed to our team at 10x People and strive to continue bringing in new employees who fit our culture and want to grow. 

We would love to work with you to invest in your future!

Now there is a simple way to get the mental health support you need!

Starting July 16th the new 988 hotline allows individuals easy access to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and mental health resources.   There has been a  hotline available at 1-800-273-8255 (1-800-273-TALK).  However, the odds of remembering this number, much less remembering it existed in a crisis, have been low.  988 has been two years in the making!  The telecommunications industry has worked diligently to change our dialing plans to allow this lifeline to go live.  

Did you know that 988 is not just for someone who is suicidal? 

Mental health affects every aspect of our lives: how we feel about ourselves and the world; solve problems, cope with stress, and overcome challenges; build relationships and connect with others; and perform in school, work, and throughout life. Mental health encompasses our emotional, psychological, and social well-being and is an essential component of overall health.¹  As a nation, we are beginning to destigmatize and address mental health issues long before they reach the point of contemplating suicide.

To learn more about the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration's 988 resources and information, visit: https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/988.

Did you know that 988 supports texting and chat?

The FCC expanded the scope of the 988 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to include the ability to text 988 to directly reach the Lifeline to better support at-risk communities in crisis, including youth and individuals with disabilities. The use of texting and chat has exploded, and the states are working hard to support the demand. Several states, including our home state of Colorado, are increasing funding to handle the new functionality.

¹ U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (2020 May 28). What is Mental Health? MentalHealth.gov. Accessed on November 10, 2021. Retrieved from https://www.mentalhealth. gov/basics/what-is-mental-health 

Today carriers are inundated with SIM swap fraud and are struggling to address consumer attacks in a timely manner.  In 2012, carriers saw a significant increase in SIM swap fraud that utilized number porting.  At that time fraud was focused on device take over for use of the phone capabilities. In 2017 there was another significant increase in fraud.  This spike was due to fraudsters' focus on monetary gain and correlated with the surge in bitcoin value.  Bitcoin is highly coveted by cybercriminals and is notoriously used for illicit activities and money laundering on the darknet.  The fraud will continue as long as there is monetary gain.

What are Service Providers doing to protect your mobile identity? 

Many Service Providers have introduced the concept of a porting pin to prevent porting fraud. This PIN must be provided before the Service Provider will allow a port to occur.  This approach has significantly decreased porting fraud but has yet to eliminate the problem.  Not all service providers have implemented the porting PIN and it does not work in all cases.   

To avoid putting their customers at risk of personal accounts getting compromised and financial loss, mobile carriers need to be attentive in their authentication practices. 

What action is the FCC taking to protect your mobile identity? 

The FCC’s issued a notice of proposed rulemaking related to protecting consumers from SIM Swap and Port-Out Fraud requiring phone carriers to authenticate customer’s identity before transferring their number to a new phone. For example, having customers authenticate their identity by offering a pre-established password or getting a one-time password sent via text message, email or phone call.  Carriers will also have to immediately notify customers if a SIM change request is made on their account.  

If customers cannot authenticate their accounts, the provider will not be able to SIM swap phones via these methods. Phone carriers will also have to give customers a “port-freeze” option on their accounts that does not allow for any SIM Swapping.

To date, there is no industry-wide solution

The concept of “port locking” has been discussed in industry forums as early as 2003 and as recently as 2019.  However, this is not a direction being considered today.  

What can you do to protect yourself?

Consumers can log on to the FTC’s  identitytheft.gov website to report theft and learn how to protect themselves. A few immediate actions you can take include: 

• Pay attention to your bill - if you notice anything peculiar, contact your phone company
• Protect your account with a PIN - without this password, your account cannot be accessed. 
• Be on the alert for Phishing Scams - never give financial or other information to unexpected callers. If you’re concerned about an account issue, call the company back and make sure you use a known phone number. 

As victims are experiencing the costs, no consensus has yet been reached on an implementation approach for carriers much less consumers.  If you are a victim, Identitytheft.gov provides resources including step-by-step instructions to guide victims through the recovery process. 

Get insights into what happens when fraudsters steal your mobile identity by reading our Mobile Identity Nightmare - Attack blog. 

Now that Bob knows he has been attacked, how does he attempt to recover his identity?

Recovery from the Attack

• Bob begins by trying to reach customer support centers at his financial institutions, but couldn’t reach anyone who could help.
• He could find no way to quickly reach anyone at Google support after hours via phone or email.
• Initially, the wireless carrier customer service center was unable to help.  Being telecom savvy, Bob was persistent in escalating to get to someone who could help. 
• Bob had an extra SIM card in the office that he could use to move his number back to his own mobile device.
• It took Bob over an hour to regain control of his phone number working with his backup SIM card.
• Bob lost control of Gmail for over 2 hours before he was able to get Google to shut down his account. 
• Unfortunately, hacked Gmail accounts are considered poisoned by Google, and can not be recovered.  With no backup, Bob lost years of emails and pictures of his family due to the incident.

The Damage is Done

While the average person may not be aware of SIM swap fraud, much less how to prevent it, Bob was fortunate in that his knowledge allowed him to quickly regain his phone number and limit his damages.  He lost his Gmail account but had no financial loss and was not personally attacked.  Bob is not alone.  Attacks occur every day around the world.  

What is being done about this?

What happens when fraudsters steal your mobile identity by committing Porting or SIM swap fraud?  The following is a true real-life example of SIM swap fraud.  This attack happened to “Bob”, a key employee of a security and risk prevention company.   

The Fraudster Attacks

• The fraudster initiated a swap of Bob’s mobile phone number to a different phone/SIM.
• Bob had a pin code on his account to presumably prevent any activity with his mobile number but the wireless carrier allowed a one-time exception. 
• The swap was completed on a Friday night just before retail customer service centers closed allowing the fraudster more time to exploit Bob’s identity before he became aware. 
• Once in control of the mobile phone number, the fraudster reset Bob’s Gmail password to gain full access utilizing two-factor authentication involving a text message sent to the mobile phone.
• The fraudster reset not only the Gmail password but the mobile phone number associated with the account to a different phone number, locking anyone else out of the account. 
• With access to Bob’s Gmail the fraudster quickly data-mined the email for banking information (e.g., US Bank, Wells Fargo, Paypal, Coinbase, etc.)
• Using Bob’s email as the username to target banking and bitcoin accounts, the fraudster systematically attacked for password resets via two-factor authentication.

The Fraud is Discovered

Bob realizes he has been attacked when he can’t use his phone to make a call.  Then he realizes he can’t access his email.

How does he recover? 

Read our next blog “Mobile Identity Nightmare - Response”

Phone numbers are used for more than reaching someone via voice or text, they are increasingly used to validate a subscriber's identity for account access.  Fraudsters have recognized this and are exploiting the increasing use of mobile phone numbers for identity.  

Criminals are utilizing number portability and SIM swap fraud to take control of a consumer’s phone to gain access to their personal and financial information. 

Today, these fraudsters use a variety of approaches including asking “their” wireless provider to replace a “lost” phone.  It is also relatively easy with some knowledge of the subscriber's personal information to port the phone number to a new account and be issued a phone with a new SIM.

These fraudsters, once in possession of the new phone, work quickly to invade websites and bank accounts, in most cases utilizing two-factor authentication, to steal credentials and capture one-time links, authentication codes, and passwords sent via text.  Once identity is verified, the criminals go after personal and financial information.  While mobile phones are primarily the target, wireline phones are not immune from attack. 

SIM Swap and Porting fraud are on the rise with damages to individuals, banks, and corporations worldwide.  

What does an attack look like? 

Read our next blog “Mobile Identity Nightmare - Attack”

The telecom industry has been slow to change, and now several forces have come together to reshape the industry in a profound manner. As communications service providers navigate these shifts and use the changes to create a competitive advantage, competition between providers becomes increasingly turbulent.  

The industry has generated a need for customer-focused services and greater productivity. Shifts in industry structure are now based on offering new value and ensuring that communication and content services become digital. Let’s take a look into a few trends that are reshaping and changing the Telecom landscape. 

• 5G Network: 5G is already being used in transportation, education, and healthcare environments. As our wireless networks become more critical due to higher dependency by people, many telecom companies turn to and are investing in 5G as a way to provide the public with the most effective network. 
• Cloud Computing: Cloud computing is helping telecom companies thrive and provide better services in this shifting landscape by ensuring high scalability, helping to guarantee resilience, and offering quick disaster recovery. Investing in infrastructure to provide more cloud-based applications and sustaining them is something every Telecom company should be investing in to ensure relevancy. 
• Big Data: Big Data helps Telecom companies increase profits and it’s potential is significant in terms of helping to win clients. Only 20% of telecom companies have been deploying big data. Those early adaptors are reaping the benefits of turning data into profitable insights. Big Data projects can be launched in sales and marketing, customer care, competitive intelligence, and network and supply chain optimisation. If you need a competitive advantage - look no further than launching a Big Data project. 
• Internet of things: IoT helps providers of services to provide more excellent means of communication between devices and individuals. IoT is pushing change and helping to create smooth business processes, increased revenue, and defining greater efficiencies. As we continue to understand the need for fast and stable connectivity as Internet-connected devices become more prevalent  and gain more insights into how IoT makes it possible for telecom suppliers to track the different communications bases remotely - we must continue to explore new ways of using the Internet of Things and stay ahead of the game. 

Launching new solutions, adapting existing business models, and network infrastructure upgrades are inevitable for telecommunication companies interested in staying viable and growth-driven in the post-pandemic environment.

The landscape is changing and it is changing fast. Make sure your company is growing with it. 

The explosive growth in digital engagement has also led to an undesirable outcome: a sharp increase in cyber fraud. Identity fraud—derived on the back of credentials stolen through a massive number of phishing attacks—has gone up significantly compared to previous years. SIM swaps and account takeovers are now more common than ever before.

• 20% increase in account takeover incidents in financial service in 2020 from previous year
• $56 Billion in financial losses due to identity fraud in the US in 2020
• $436 Million in fraud losses reported in the US where the contact method used by scammers was a phone call
• 4X rise in number of SIM swap fraud cases in the UK during the last five years 

To support our customer's efforts to protect their customers, 10x People is adding support for identity verification for account takeover protection including support for GSMA Mobile Connect. GSMA Mobile connect allows Digital Service Providers (DSP) to match the phone number entered by the user with the device accessing the DSP portal.  Mobile Connect has been launched by more than 70 operators around the world.

In addition, 10x People is extending the GSMA Mobile Connect API so that additional information can be supplied to further validate the customer for fraud risk or trust scoring that is leveraged by financial organizations.  

10x People hates cyber fraud just as much as you do.  We can help you protect your customers.  

Contact us at info@10xpeople.com to learn more. 

Sources:  Kaspersky, US FTC, Javelin Strategy & Research, Action Fraud