The Belgian regulatory authority BIPT has today published a set of documents, constituting a public consultation on terms and conditions (including fees) for limited third party access to the Common Reference Database for Number Portability.

The objective of the proposed regulatory intervention is to allow parties (certain Belgian service providers, foreign service providers, SMS wholesalers, large corporate end-users, etc.) not eligible for membership of the not-for-profit association which operates the Common Reference Database Centre, or parties which do not need to actually port any numbers, to access information that enables the optimisation of the routing of fixed and mobile voice calls and SMS messages.

An intervention is considered necessary by the BIPT, because 8% of fixed and mobile numbers have been ported to-date, and an increasing proportion of voice and SMS traffic is not being routed to the correct operator, which unnecessarily raises costs for all parties involved.

The proposed fees for third party access are as follows:

- One-off activation fee: €0,0103 per ported number on the date of the request for activation. At the level of 1.167 million fixed and mobile ported numbers (end of April 2004 figures), this amounts to a one-off activation fee of €12020. Note: it will be possible to request access only to fixed or only to mobile routing information, thereby reducing the one-off fee.

- Recurring annual fee: €5000

- Specific fees for specific actions and interventions.

Third party access is proposed to be subject to strict conditions, specifically a formal validation of the right of access by the BIPT and a prohibition on sharing or resale of the routing information obtained through third party access.

Interested parties are invited to comment on the BIPT's proposals and on the contractual and technical documents put forward by the not-for-profit association by 15 Nov 2004.

A draft (in French) of the proposed BIPT Council decision can be accessed by clicking here. Five further related documents are available on the BIPT website.

For a discussion, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it