RESELLER CHANNEL: Sprint Opens Can of CIC-S

By Khali Henderson

Posted: 08/2002

Sprint Opens Can of CIC-S

By Khali Henderson

Anticipating a surge in
reseller-sponsored 10-10-XXX dial-around programs and regulatory pressure to
route CIC-based resellers’ calls, Sprint Wholesale set out to alter its systems
to do just that. Of course that was several years ago, and a lot has changed in
the market, says Chris Mullen, group manager for Sprint Wholesale Marketing. He
notes the fever over dial-around has passed.

By early 2000, Mullen says it
appeared the capability would have no value as a product outside of satisfying
the carrier’s regulatory obligations. However, recent changes in the market have
given the product — Sprint Wholesale Carrier Identification Code Service, or
CIC-S — a second chance, he says.

"Carriers don’t have the
ability to deploy network," he says, referring to restraints on capital
expenditures since the 2001 economic downturn. "Basically, they can have
Sprint do it and pay per minute instead of outlaying capital all at once to a
switch manufacturer."

Introduced last fall, CIC-S has two
basic capabilities. The first is to capture previously unidentified and
unbillable calls. The second is to create new routing and dial-around services
based on a CIC.

Both functions are contingent upon
Sprint receiving the CIC from the LEC end office in the CIP/CSP data contained
in SS7 messages. Carrier Identification Parameter (CIP) delivers the CIC;
Carrier Selection Parameter (CSP) identifies how the calling party dialed the
call.

Up until recently, Mullen explains,
the CIP/CSP data did not include the CIC, making it impossible for Sprint or
other carriers to route resellers’ calls based on CIC; they routed them by ANI,
which is inherent to presubscribed accounts. Mullen says not all the ILEC end
offices are capable of passing the information so it’s not always automatically
available. However, Sprint will coordinate with the LECs to load the reseller’s
CIC on their end offices and then tell the LEC to "point" the
resellers CIC to Sprint’s Feature Group D trunks.

The LEC charges the reseller to load
the CIC on a LATA-by-LATA basis. Sprint also charges a per-minute premium to
route calls by CIC to cover the cost of querying its Service Control Point (SCP)
database to obtain the unique routing requirements for the caller. The charge —
fractions of a cent — varies depending on term and volume commitment.

What’s good about the service from a
regulatory standpoint, Mullen explains, is it allows casual dialers to reach the
carrier of choice (the reseller) instead of having Sprint complete and bill the
call, which can be interpreted by the end user as slamming.

From a revenue-generating
standpoint, CIC-S can be combined with Sprint Wholesale Customized Network
Routing (CNR) to provide unique call routing based on the CIC. For example, an
international reseller may decide it wants to terminate all international calls
on its CIC but allow Sprint to terminate the domestic ones, Mullen explains.

Mullen says Sprint has consulted on
eight client opportunities since March. Most of them are 1+ carriers that are
branching into dial-around, he says. The particular opportunity for
international resellers with IRUs seeking to market dial-around products to a
particular ethnic community in the States, he adds.

"They are finding themselves
addicted to the traffic and need to keep the minute flow up," he says.

How It Works
Source: Sprint Corp.