Number Administration Deed Slammed by TUANZ
RSS
Posted Mon 30 July 2007 @ 4:35 a.m. by Ernie Newman
I make no apology for a strong condemnation of the infamous NAD that appeared last week in The Independent Financial Review and Computerworld.
Whether or not the sale of New Zealand +64 phone numbers to Skype is a bad thing, the episode has shown that by international standards New Zealand's control of our numbering system is as loose as a goose. We have become about the only country where numbers are controlled by the industry rather than the government, and quite frankly the industry is not protecting the integrity of the numbering system well enough.
To add to that the NAD is an unnecessary barrier to entry, requiring genuine new entrants to stump up with an unnecessary extra fee and attend an extra round of meetings for the purpose of, as one of them put it recently, "making sure the big guys aren't putting anything across me."
There's nothing wrong with industry self regulation if it's done properly. The NAD is not. The best answer is to move the administration of the NAD, post haste, into the well-oiled machinery of the Telecommunications Carriers' Forum (don't you love their new Web site?) where logically it belongs.
Categories: Fixed line carriers | ISPs | Regulatory | TUANZ policy | Vendors | Wireless carriers