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Topic this month:
CPS Carrier Pre Select
"A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems shorter than a minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute, it is longer than any hour. That's relativity."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
June 2009Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Last month we discussed LLU, the unbundling of the local loop. Our topic this month, Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS), in many cases walks hand in hand with the concept of LLU. To read last-month's article on LLU please click here.
Once LLU has been achieved, i.e. many operators share the local loop from the nearest Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) exchange to the home, carrier pre selection becomes possible.
So what is it then? Carrier pre-selection enables the subscriber of the telephone services to choose which operator he/she wants to use for any or all call types. Call types refer here to local, long distance, international, mobile, special services and so on. If for example Operator A supplies real cheap after-hours local and national calls – just when I want to phone my long-winded sister I would select this operator for my local calls. During the day I call mobile phones from my home business and Operator B offers the best rates, then I would choose to route my mobile calls via this operator. Therefore the subscriber has choice and can manage his/her call profile to achieve the most economic results.
How is this achieved? In most cases a profile is requested from the various operators when you sign-up for their services and they ensure that the equipment at your local exchange is configured to route the appropriate call types to their carrier networks. As far as the subscriber is concerned, this routing is transparent and they don't have to do anything, but dial the numbers and the pre-selection happens automatically and transparently.
Carrier selection can also take place by dialling certain prefixes (or access codes) to force the selection at the exchange. Thus I can force my international calls via Operator C by dialling a set prefix, wait for a new dial tone and then dial normally. This is not pre-selection but LLU is required for this kind of carrier choice. Pre-selection removes the burden of selection from the subscriber. For businesses CPS means that the Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is not required to be programmed to route traffic to carrier specific trunks anymore.
CPS is still a controversial subject in many countries together with LLU. CPS does open the markets for more competition and can only hold benefit to the public at large.
See the following links:
Read more from Westlake Communication UK
Wikepedia.
Submissions to ICASA in South Afica 2009 recagarding CPS.
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