Numbering Plan Update 2026-04-02 - We need to talk about OBR

If you want to jump to this week's numbering updates, skip the OBR section....

We need to talk about OBR

Origin Based Rating was always going to be a problem. When a major operator first introduced it — widely understood to compensate for declining mobile termination rates — the industry pushed back hard. The prediction that the industry had at the time was clear: this would create systemic headaches across the wholesale voice chain. That prediction is, unfortunately, coming of age.

Now the huge USA carrier AT&T has joined in with OBR. They've introduced a 19-cent surcharge for calls delivered with an "invalid" CLI, and additional charges for calls delivered towards numbers that aren't AT&T's. On paper, that sounds reasonable. In practice, it's a real problem.

What does "invalid" mean?

Invalid according to whom? AT&T's view of which CLIs are valid and which aren't is based on their own interpretation of the global numbering plan, which changes frequently, and they aren't sharing which prefixes they attribute to which origination networks, nor which prefixes are invalid (and number length, don't forget number length...). So the carrier imposing the surcharge won't allow you to pre-determine the prefixes the surcharge is based on.

Surcharging for MNP ported numbers?

If AT&T is surcharging for calls to "non-AT&T" numbers, what happens when a number has been ported to AT&T from Verizon? Is that an AT&T number or not? What about an AT&T-native number that's been ported out to T-Mobile? Which network is the B-number surcharge added to — the original allocating network, or the current serving network?

Do all originating, and transit, carriers need to check the MNP status of a destination number to see if they are transiting towards the USA in case the number is (or now is-not) an AT&T number?

The transit carrier's impossible position

Here's where it gets painful: The transit carrier sitting in the middle of the call chain has no say in how the terminating carrier classifies the traffic, and possibly no visibility into why a particular CLI was surcharged. They route a call in good faith, and an invoice arrives with line items they can't predict or prevent.

The prudent carrier may negotiate with AT&T for a reject-rather-than-surcharge model; if a call would trigger a surcharge, reject it at the interconnect so the transit carrier can re-route or drop it rather than eating an unexpected charge. It's a pragmatic workaround, but it's a workaround, not a solution.

OBR region spaghetti

The i3 Forum's Numbering Plan community has identified 174 unique OBR category entries across the industry — and that's after manual deduplication. These are categories where your call may or may not fall into, depending on if the prefix of the calling number is bucketed into that category by the terminating carrier's team.

Categories vary wildly from operator to operator: "Zone A", "Zone 0", "fractional zone", buckets that change with every vendor deal. Italy alone has 5 different OBR rates depending on origination. Germany has "rest-of-world" plus "Zones 1" through 4, separately for mobile and fixed. Portugal to France? 81 OBR categories.

NANPA assigns roughly 450 validation codes for US origination groups, but when carriers implement these to check OBR origination zones, the numbers don't match. One operator maps to 450 non-surcharge US codes for terminating to Germany. Another maps it to 410. Same traffic, same destination — different classification, different price. I imagine the transit carriers are very closely cross checking all possible onward-routing OBR fineprint. Unfortunately this isn't an edge case, it's the norm because different carriers use different numbering plans.

OBR is driving the very problem it penalises

Here's the irony. By surcharging based on CLI origin, OBR creates a direct financial incentive to spoof CLIs. If a call from a high-rate origin country can be made to look like it's from a low-rate country, the carrier would avoid the surcharge by changing the CLI. CLI spoofing to game OBR is already a known problem (Orange Wholesale are even naming traffic routed via SIMboxes as "OBR fraud"). When spoofed CLIs are caught, the carrier gets billed at the maximum rate, triggering 90-day billing disputes.

And what happens when an invalid CLI surcharge catches a spoofed number that the transit carrier had no way of knowing was spoofed? The transit carrier pays for someone else's fraud.

What the industry needs

The fundamental problem isn't AT&T's pricing. It's that the call chain — the originating carrier, the transit carrier(s), the terminating carrier — don't agree to a single, authoritative source of numbering truth.

Every carrier maintains its own view of which number ranges belong to which operator, in which country, on which network. These views diverge. They're updated on different schedules, sourced from different databases, and interpreted through different commercial lenses. The result is a system where two parties can look at the same CLI and reach legitimately different conclusions about its validity. I can't begin to imagine the billing inconsistencies along the call-chain.

What's needed is a unified, industry-standard numbering plan — a shared reference that transit carriers can validate against to demonstrate due diligence. Not to eliminate commercial disagreements, but to establish a common baseline. If a transit carrier can show they verified a CLI against a recognised, regularly-updated numbering authority before routing the call, that should count for something when a surcharge lands on their invoice for a call from a phone number that isn't possible in a far-off foreign land.

The ITU should be the place for this - that's why we regularly promote timely updates from nation states to the ITU. Unfortunately the speed at which nation states work is not as urgent as the industry's requirement for a unified dial plan.

The i3 Forum's numbering work group is helping push this direction, solidifying behind the ITU's E.129 format template. But the pace needs to pick up. AT&T's surcharges aren't going away. Other terminating carriers will follow. The transit carriers caught in the middle need a defensible position, and that starts with a numbering plan everyone can point to.

e164.com data consolidation

We built e164.com because we didn't know whether the industry can build the shared infrastructure before everyone falls out and the surcharges make the current model unsustainable. We think the correct unified place for the data is the ITU directly, and we spoke in person at UN ITU HQ in February pushing for timely updates from regulators and state departments to share numbering allocations to the ITU. However, whilst we continue to build the future completeness of the ITU data with nation states, we need an industry numbering plan that can be relied upon to be accurate today.

It didn't look like anyone else was going to commit to building the data, so we went ahead and took on the challenge. We have a long list of industry people who said this wasn't possible, but a list of people saying something is impossible is a great motivator.

Our model is that we're the most accurate numbering plan for the telecoms industry right now. We take on-board all feedback, our team investigates every edge case, we push for the industry's requirement for numbering transparency.

No we can't detect a spoofed number from a valid number range, but we certainly highlight when a CLI is invalid, or a Premium Rate call. We can do that for every country in the world.

We're promoting our team as your outsourced investigating team for anomalies - because your anomaly is the industry's anomaly and it will affect everyone.

Numbering investigations chew up team's time like nothing else - backwards and forwards between inter-connected carriers, talks with the regulator and small tweaks to the numbering plan every week.

NB: email support@e164.com with anomalies or feedback - you don't need to be a paid subscriber to our numbering data, and we have a lot of connections we can talk to when investigating your query.

We all know how quickly numbering plans change - just look at the average number of updates we track every week (22k this week!). You can see that a single numbering plan, with a dedicated team managing your numbering plan view which aligns with everyone else's numbering plan view, is one of the most valuable datasets in telecoms.

We publish the e164 dataset every week, available to download, in full, automatically for subscribers to their fraud systems, billing systems and own numbering data.

Numbering Plan updates this week

Weekly overview

Total number of existing prefixes which have changed companies: 11,671
Total number of completely new prefixes: 10,676
Total number of removed prefixes: 284
Total numbering plan prefix changes this week: 22,631

This Week's Highlights:

• 8 new companies joined the numbering plan
• 2 companies went dark
• 3 major M&A movements detected

New companies that we welcome to the Numbering Plan

• New company: BKUP TELECOM LTDA. BKUP TELECOM LTDA operates as a small fiber optic internet service provider based in Rio das Antas, Santa Catarina, founded in 2007. While officially registered with IT equipment retail as their primary CNAE activity, their secondary activities include wireless telecommunications services (CNAE 61.20-5-99) and internet access provision services. The company is registered on PeeringDB and operates one network with its own Autonomous System Number (ASN). Learn more.
  • Added Brazil: BRA-554935690-GEOGRAPHIC
  • Added Brazil: BRA-554935990-GEOGRAPHIC
• New company: DNET PROVEDOR DE INTERNET LTDA. Regional fixed-line broadband provider founded in 2017 and based in São Borja, Rio Grande do Sul, operating under AS269290 with allocated IPv6 space 2804:6254::/32. Classified as providing multimedia communication services (SCM - Serviços de Comunicação Multimídia) under Brazilian telecommunications regulations, focusing on local broadband internet access in the southern Brazilian market.
  • Added Brazil: BRA-555534410-GEOGRAPHIC
• New company: HAVENSTOKE COMMUNICATIONS LTD. Recently incorporated in December 2025, may be connected to Shout Telecoms, a technology supplier that develops carrier-grade solutions including SIP switches, call recording, and intelligent routing systems for UK telecoms networks, suggesting this may be a new entity for specific numbering or service provision activities.
  • Added GBR: GBR-44300008-UAN
  • Added GBR: GBR-44333301-UAN
  • Added GBR: GBR-44345576-UAN
• New company: Hexios BVBA. Hexios BVBA provides Asterisk PBX solutions, Asterisk consultancy, hosted PBX, and SIP trunking services. The company operates Linux and Windows system administration with Asterisk (VoIP) telephony deployment, focusing on VoIP/PBX services for enterprise customers through their technical expertise in Asterisk-based solutions.
  • Added BEL: BEL-3293348161-GEOGRAPHIC
• New company: IHever GmbH. We are seeking more information and liaising with the telecoms registrar in Austria.
  • Added AUT: AUT-43800044383-FREEPHONE
• New company: Lexico Telecom. Latvia-based Lexico Telecom operates as a wholesale international voice and SMS carrier, offering CLI, non-CLI, and premium TDM termination, as well as global A2P messaging for enterprise and carrier customers. Its messaging unit provides bulk SMS for notifications, alerts, and promotional traffic. The company also serves retail voice customers and call centers through its termination services. Learn more.
  • Added BEL: BEL-324810-MOBILE
• New company: TelSmart. TelSmartis a cloud-based VoIP and business communications provider based in Kasterlee, Belgium. The company offers unified communications solutions for businesses, including desktop calling, mobile telephony integration, and call analytics. TelSmart launched a Flexy SIM mobile service in collaboration with Telenet, operating as an MVNO on Telenet's network. Its Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) technology, branded as Smartie Mobile, allows calls to switch automatically between internet and cellular networks. Learn more.
  • Added BEL: BEL-3293345060-GEOGRAPHIC
• New company: VIALTERNA COMUNICACIONES S.A. DE C.V.. Vialterna Comunicaciones S.A. de C.V. is a B2B managed connectivity and SD-WAN provider based in Mexico City, focused on enterprise networks using multicarrier wireless (including LTE/5G and satellite) and fixed internet to deliver last-mile connectivity solutions nationwide in Mexico. Its key sectors include banking, retail, energy, and telecoms, with services covering IoT/M2M connectivity and real-time network monitoring for sites such as ATMs, power plants, and industrial facilities. In early 2026, 100% of the company was acquired by Mexican search fund Ascenda Capital Partners. Learn more.
  • Added Mexico: MEX-522208089-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-523331649-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-524112884-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-525671192-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-526124206-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-527111341-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-528138753-MOBILE
  • Added Mexico: MEX-529131618-MOBILE

Gone Dark Companies and their ranges that have been dropped by the regulator

** Add these prefixes to your block list in the short term.**

• Removed company: WILINK TELECOM LTDA
  • Prefix removed Brazil: BRA-553422000-GEOGRAPHIC
• Removed company: nfon GmbH
  • Prefix removed Hungary: HUN-3615889-GEOGRAPHIC

M&A Watch

Each update we track if all prefixes from one company have been moved to a new company. This can highlight M&A activity, or a company leaving a geographical market.

• All ranges moved from TeleForte → Telekom
• All ranges moved from VodafoneDeutschl → Vodafone
• All ranges moved from systemIQ GmbH → Mostifon GmbH

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