Selling manually-configured DIDs via a shared pool

With PortaSwitch, you can become an active player in the wholesale DID market by granting other service providers access to your DID inventory and enabling them to provision DIDs on demand. 

This chapter provides you with instructions for how to configure a wholesale DID exchange in PortaSwitch.

If you wish to buy DID numbers from another PortaSwitch owner and provision them on-demand, please refer to the On-demand DID provisioning from another PortaSwitch handbook.

Your company, EasyDIDs, owns a pool of 10M DID numbers. Your wholesale partner, FastNet, is also a PortaSwitch owner. FastNet plans to introduce residential services in their system and thus require DID numbers.

You configure access to your DID pool for on-demand DID provisioning and charge FastNet per DID number as follows:

• $2 activation fee;
• $5 monthly recurring fee.

Before you proceed with the configuration steps, make sure:

• You have created a DID buyer as a vendor in the system.
• You have configured the routing to this DID buyer’s system as described in the Basic Residential VoIP Service handbook.
• You have a rate sheet file with the DID list and the corresponding fees.

1. Upload DID numbers to DID / MSISDN inventory
2. Release DID numbers to the DID pool
3. Create a pricing DID batch and define the DID markup within
4. Create a DID provisioning customer and define their web self-care credentials
5. Assign the pricing DID batch to this customer

Please refer to the Managing DIDs for customers manually (DID inventory) handbook for instructions on how to upload DID numbers.

To use the DID numbers, release them to the DID pool.

1. In the navigation menu, select Infrastructure > DID / MSISDN inventory.
2. On the DID numbers tab, click More to open the advanced search criteria. Select a specific vendor batch from the list and click Search.

   

3. Select the appropriate DIDs and click Manage.
4. On the Group operations with DIDs panel that opens, select Pool management, and then select Release DIDs to the pool.

   

5. Click Update. On the refreshed page, you will see that the DID numbers have now been unfrozen and released to the DID pool.

   

The pricing DID batch is a storage area for DID numbers that can be used for a particular purpose (e.g., to be provisioned to end users). Pricing batches allow you to apply additional charges for using DID numbers.

At this point, create a pricing batch with a DID markup.

1. On the DID / MSISDN inventory page, open the Pricing batches tab and click + Batch.
2. On the Add pricing batch panel, fill in the pricing batch details:
   • Name – type a pricing batch name.
   • Applied to – select Customer.
   • Type – select Inventoried as the batch contains DID numbers previously uploaded to the DID inventory.
   • Pricing – select Billable.
   • Pricing parameters:
     • Currency – choose the currency used to charge for DID usage.
     • Additional activation fee – type in 2 here.
     • Additional recurring fee – type in 5 here.
     • Recurring fee markup – specify a markup that will be included in the recurring amount charged to the customer in addition to the actual DID cost (charged by a DID vendor).
     • Rounding precision – specify the rounding pattern to obtain “marketable” figures. This will specify the last “pre-set” digits in the figure.

       

3. Click Save.

To enable your DID buyers to access your DID inventory and provision the numbers, you need to create a DID provisioning customer. This acts as a placeholder for all provisioned DID numbers and allows you to control the billing for their usage.

1. In the navigation menu, select Sales > Customers and click + Customer.
2. On the Add customer panel, fill in the customer details:
   • Balance control – specify the way the customer will pay for the service. Choose Postpaid.
   • Name – type a short name for the customer object; this will be used on the web interface.
   • Currency – choose the currency in which this customer will be billed.
   • Credit limit – assign a credit limit for the customer.
   • Business model – a business model defines what type of service is to be provided to the customer. Select Universal here.
   • Customer class – select Default customer class.
   • Billing period – choose a billing period for the customer. A billing period defines the frequency of invoicing for this customer.
   • Billing period time zone – choose a time zone in which the customer’s billing period will be closed and invoices will be generated.

     

3. Click Save.

To control charges for provisioned DID numbers, assign the pricing DID batch to your DID provisioning customer.

1. On your customer’s panel, navigate to General info.
2. Open the Additional info tab.
3. Select a previously created pricing batch in the Auto-provision DIDs via batch field.

   

4. Click Save.

The configuration is finished. Now provide your DID buyer with the DID provisioning customer’s web self-care credentials. As soon as a DID number is provisioned from your DID inventory, it will have the In use status.