ANACOM approved on 27 December 2022 the draft regulation on the designation of the “49” range of the National Numbering Plan (NNP) for the provision of the transmission service used to provide machine-to-machine (M2M) services and mobile Internet access service, whereby this range may be used in the context of eCall systems. The respective notice was published today, 11 January, in Series II of the Official Gazette No 8/2023 - Notice No 594/2023https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1736296.
Bearing in mind that different studies indicate a significant increase in M2M communications and the underlying need to use NNP numbers to clearly identify connected devices, ANACOM considers that it should prepare for a more demanding scenario and, as such, ensure the adequate availability of numbers to fulfil future needs.
Accordingly, the adopted draft regulation aims to designate a specific range of non-geographic numbers within the E.164 https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.164/en plan of the NNP for this purpose - the “49” range - 12 digits long and with a total availability of 10 billion numbers.
As far as the scope of use of this range is concerned, the mobile Internet access service was also considered, bearing in mind that it is a service with high usage potential, given the growing relevance it has taken on, namely within the scope of the socio-economic changes resulting from the recent pandemic, which adds to the risk of exhaustion of current NNP mobile numbering ranges.
The adoption of this draft regulation will entail amending Regulation No 58/2005https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=975391, of 18 August (portability regulation) and Regulation No 1028/2021https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1718241 of 29 December (sub assignment regulation), to the extent strictly necessary to accommodate the new numbering range in the respective scopes.
Taking into account that, under the terms of article 55 of the Electronic Communications Lawhttps://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1727429, ANACOM is required to ensure the availability of a range of non-geographic numbers for the provision of electronic communications services, other than interpersonal communications services, at least within the territory of the European Union, it is considered appropriate, given the characteristics of services at concerned, to provide that numbers in the “49” range may be used abroad for the provision of these services in other countries.
Aware that companies need some time to implement this new numbering range, namely to carry out the necessary settings for the network and its systems, ANACOM has decided that companies which currently provide offers of these services should be allowed a transitional period for this purpose. Once this period is over, these companies will only be able to assign numbers from the new numbering range for the services for which it is now designated.
The draft regulation will now be submitted to public consultation, under the applicable legislation, for a period of 30 working days. Interested parties may send contributions until 22 February 2023, in writing and in Portuguese, preferably by email to regulamento.m2m@anacom.pt1.
Once the consultation procedure is completed, contributions received will be made public, whereby interested parties are also requested to send a version with all confidential information removed for publication on this website.
1 Each email may contain one or more files as long as the total size of all files does not exceed 10 megabytes. If necessary, comments may be divided into two or more emails.
Consult:
- Consultation on the draft regulation on the designation of the "49" range of the National Numbering Plan https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1737164
