On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 10:13:30 +0100
Someone Somewhere wrote:
On 18/07/2019 09:19, wrote:
What license? If its a virtual network then yes, there may be a cost to
maintain a number though I doubt it because they're assigned in blocks
anyway.
But otherwise no.
So who does O2 etc buy their core network equipment from? How do they
charge the operator for their software, hardware and services?
Feel free to explain how any of that is relevant to individual phone numbers.
And O2 *are* an operator, they own the base station equipment.
Oh dear. Firstly I am well aware of how mobile networks work, but to
answer your specific points numbers *are* scarce - look at the Ofcom
number list - there are very few unallocated ranges. Operators have
Ofcom are quite capable of making more. There are potentially 999,999,999
numbers available in the UK. We had this argument 20 years ago when IP4
was "scarce". Suddenly a lot more addresses were found when needed. Its only
in the last few years they actually ran out.
Off the top of my head, it's also not just a number, there will be
entries in the billing system, AuC/AAA, HLR/HSS, CRM, voicemail, VoLTE
TS, etc. Many of those vendors will be charging the operator on a per
Which vendors will be charging O2 then?
subscriber basis. Those systems also have a finite capacity per
Oh FFS, you can buy terabyte consumer drives for a few hundred quid now, never
mind the ones used by large corps.
instance, so at some point an additional subscriber will cause the need
for a large capital expenditure for a new instance, plus the data
centre, power, cooling etc to host it.
Yes, I'm sure unused numbers means a new data centre would be required.