Petitions of Vonage Holdings Corp. and TeleCommunications Systems, Inc. for Limited Waiver Regarding Access to Numbering Resources

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) establishes a limited technical trial of direct access to numbers. Specifically, it grants Vonage Holdings Corporation (Vonage) and other interconnected VoIP providers that have pending petitions for waiver of the Commission's rules and that meet the terms and conditions outlined a limited, conditional waiver to obtain a small pool of telephone numbers directly from the NANPA and/or the PA for use in providing interconnected VoIP services. We tailor this waiver to test whether giving interconnected VoIP providers direct access to numbers will raise issues relating to number exhaust, number porting, VoIP interconnection, or intercarrier compensation, and if so, how those issues may be efficiently addressed. The trial, and the public comment, will improve the Commission's ability to adopt well-crafted rules in this proceeding. In addition, we grant a narrow waiver of our rules to allow TeleCommunication Systems, Inc. (TCS) direct access to pseudo Automatic Number Identification (p-ANI) codes for the purpose of providing 911 and Enhanced 911 (E911) service. As discussed below, this limited waiver will allow TCS, which provides VoIP Positioning Center service, to better ensure that emergency calls are properly routed to trained responders at public safety answering points, or PSAPs.