Neustar Fighting To Keep Contract Worth Half of Their Annual Revenues

Neustar is fighting to keep a contract that makes up over half of its revenue and it has nothing to do with domain names. The company has been in charge of a major governmental telecommunications contract for the last 17 years. The contract deals with the local number portability administrator (LNPA), which helps phone subscribers keep their numbers when switching carriers.

The company is now looking to do whatever it can to keep Telcordia, a division of Ericsson, from taking over. Bloomberg noted that the LNPA contract accounted for 60 percent, 50 percent and 49 percent of Neustar’s revenue in 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively, according to an annual filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fierce Wireless wrote:

In lengthy comments posted with the FCC, Neustar argued that Ericsson has a vested interest in the success of its U.S. carrier customers and that as a network vendor it cannot be viewed as neutral, and neither can SunGard, Ericsson’s subcontractor for data center services, because it has connections to interconnected VoIP and telecom service providers. Neustar said Ericsson has not and could not put forward any way to protect Telcordia from influence.

Further, Neustar said the FCC needs to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking before ruling on the LNPA recommendation from NANC, and that doing so is required by law. Neustar said the FCC followed these procedures in 1997 when it first designated Neustar as the LNPA and incorporated the NANC’s recommendations on neutrality, which bars telecommunication network equipment manufacturers like Ericsson and their affiliates from serving as an LNPA.

Neustar also took issue with the NANC’s recommendation, calling it a “black box” with little to no evidence and analysis.

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