Customers' ability to port their existing telephone numbers to a different carrier (number portability) has added choice to end users.

This has simultaneously added cost and complexity to telecommunications carriers trying to manage regulatory, technical and business demands for international traffic.

For inter-country traffic, the change toward "consumer centric" numbers (owned by the customer) rather than "carrier centric" numbers (pre-established code plans) has increasingly challenged the carriers' business and technical operational models – resulting in higher risk, negative financial impacts and poorer voice quality.

With increasing numbers of consumers and businesses taking advantage of local number portability and mobile number portability, the full impact on service providers with international traffic needs to be addressed.