The Telecommunications Law 431/2002 (Article 5.1.f and Article 31.1) gave to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (“the Authority”) the responsibility for establishing and managing the numbering needed for Customers and Users of Public Telecommunication Services. The Authority is consulting on numbering management in stages, dealing initially with proposed changes in the Numbering Plan. A second consultation dealing with Implementation of Numbering changes and Administration will follow after the conclusion of the first consultation.

Numbering management is principally concerned with telephone numbers, which customers need to use when making calls or sending messages in telephone networks. Because these numbers are used by customers, they can affect the success of competition, especially if customers can obtain and use numbers from one service provider more simply than from another service provider.

No country introduces a new Numbering Plan without good cause, which is normally a shortage of number blocks available for allocation to Service Providers. In Lebanon, the existing Plan is experiencing such a shortage.

The proposed Plan is a closed Numbering Plan, which means that there is no local dialing as is the present case in Lebanon, where national numbers are dialed even for calls to numbers for fixed network services in the same locality. This makes all numbers (except international numbers and short codes) have the same length, reducing potential customer confusion and simplifying the introduction of Number Portability.

The NNP was launched for public consultation and interested parties submitted their feedback by the closing date after having reviewed the integral version of the concerned document.

The feedback was submitted by email at numberingplan@tra.gov.lb and by courier (hard and soft copy) to the TRA’s address.