Ooma reduced routing costs by 10% with NexOSS
The Challenge
As Ooma grew and began scaling up their network, they began to notice that their calls were not consistently being routed to the lowest cost carrier.
Result
Ooma chose to use NexOSS, a simple and low cost solution for complete VoIP network management. What makes the TransNexus solution unique is that it allows Ooma to host the NPAC database locally, within their own network. Their server then stays automatically synchronized with the NPAC, ensuring that their routing is based on near real time LRN data.
Customer Take Away
“The Transnexus tool provided us with a way to dramatically increase the accuracy of our routes. Our routing costs were reduced by more than 10% through the LRN optimization.”
About Ooma
Ooma is a breakthrough technology start-up based in Palo Alto, CA that provides a VoIP alternative to traditional home phone service. Founded in 2004, Ooma offers a consumer electronics device that provides free U.S. and Canadian telephone calling and advanced telephony services to hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Customers pay only applicable taxes and fees. Ooma delivers HD-quality call clarity and the reliability of traditional phone service at a fraction of the cost, in a sleek and innovative design. Their free home phone service uses the Ooma Telo device with the customer’s high-speed Internet and regular home phone. Ooma provides all the features of a traditional home phone service, including voicemail, call-waiting, caller-ID and 911, as well as extremely low international rates and optional advanced calling features.
The Challenge
As Ooma grew and began scaling up their network, they noticed that their calls were not consistently being routed to the lowest cost carrier. According to Toby Farrand, VP of Engineering and Operations at Ooma, “We would route a call to one of our ITSPs who advertised the lowest rate to a particular exchange, but we would often find that the target phone number had moved to another carrier, so our ITSP would not honor its advertised rate.”
Today, it is estimated that up to 40% of telephone calls made in the US are to ported telephone numbers. Routing calls based on the dialed telephone number can cause these calls to be misrouted. Though they appear to be going to the least cost carrier, these misrouted calls can actually increase termination fees by up to 25% and degrade the quality of service.
The Solution
The simple solution to this problem is to route calls based on the Local Routing Number, or LRN, instead of the dialed telephone number. Traditionally, in order to do this, SIP service providers have had to query the U.S. Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) for each outgoing call. However, sending a number portability query to an external database adds expense, as well as a critical dependence on an external network resource.
Ooma chose instead to use NexOSS. NexOSS is a simple and low cost solution for complete VoIP network management. What makes this solution unique in number portability solutions is that it allows Ooma to host the NPAC database locally within their own network. Their server then stays automatically synchronized with the NPAC, ensuring that their routing is based on near real time LRN data.
How It Works
Operators use NexOSS to provision routes, rates, and number translation rules, which are used to create a least cost routing (LCR) table. NexOSS pushes this table to the OSPrey routing server. When an Ooma customer makes a call, their network queries the OSPrey server, which uses its locally hosted NPAC database and the LCR table to return the least cost route, based on LRN. To ensure near real time number portability data, the OSPrey routing server automatically synchronizes with the NPAC database once every thirty minutes.
The Results
“The flexibility we get from the TransNexus tool improves our call quality and call completion rate as well,” said Farrand. “TransNexus has given us excellent service and they have been receptive to our suggestions for future improvements to the tool. We are looking forward to integrating the next release which will allow for us to peer with 11-digit routing.”
