Go to full article

Overview

This document contains the fundamentals of Emersion's IPND module.  

Terms

The following terminology is used when referring to the IPND and the IPND module in Emersion.

The Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) 

Carriage Service Providers that supply a carriage service to an end user are required to provide Public Number Customer Data (PNCD) to the IPND.

The Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) is an industry wide centralised database that contains the record of each public telephone number issued by Carriage Service Providers (CSPs) to their customers in Australia. Each IPND (or Public Number Customer Data) record includes the customer’s phone number, name, service and directory addresses, the type of service, whether the service is listed or unlisted and details about the CSP who provides the service. The types of services recorded in the IPND include:

• fixed telephone services.
• mobile phone services.
• VoIP services associated with a telephone number.
• free call and local rate numbers (including 13 and 1800 numbers).
• pay phone services.

CSPs (who are Data Providers under the IPND Scheme) are legally required to send a Public Number Customer Data record to the IPND for each service they provide using a public number and to swiftly correct any errors in or changes to that record. A failure by end customers to provide their CSP with accurate and up-to-date information about their service can have serious consequences in an emergency or life threatening situation, as can a failure by the CSP (as a Data Provider) to update the records of their customers in the IPND.

The ACMA and the IPND Manager share arrangements under which data users are authorised or approved to access IPND data. Authorised or approved IPND ‘Data Users’ provide a range of ‘critical’ and ‘non-critical’ services to the community and their customers. Critical data users include: the Emergency Call Services (ECS) for Triple Zero (000 and 112) and 106, Emergency Alert system, Emergency Service Organisations (Police, Fire and Ambulance) and national security and law enforcement agencies.

What information is Stored in The IPND?

IPND requires the following information in relation to each public number:

1. The public number (Service number)
2. The name of the customer
3. The name of the CSP
4. The service address of the customer
5. An alternate address flag to indicate that a service may not be at the customer’s service address recorded in the IPND (for example, this can apply to calls made from a local service connected to a PABX, or when using nomadic services such as VoIP)
6. if the alternate address flag is set to ‘True’, a contact name and number for the customer
7. Whether the service is unlisted or listed
8. For listed services, the name and address of the customer to appear in public number directories
9. Whether the telephone service is to be used for government, business, charitable or private purposes – if practicable.
10. The type of service for example: fixed, mobile, payphone or premium services

The service address stored by the IPND should be the physical address which terminates at a residence or business; it should not be a PO Box.

Emersion's IPND Integration

Emersion's platform has an integration directly to the IPND.  Data is generated from the information contained within Emersion and sent to the IPND on a daily basis.

This comes down to the following 3 functions.

1. Data for each new eligible service added in the system (for IPND enabled Service Types) is sent to the IPND
2. Each time an eligible service is amended in the system, ensure IPND is advised of required amendments.
3. Each time a service number is disconnected, ensure disconnected services are removed from IPND to avoid any possible confusion within IPND. 

How Is This Captured in Emersion?

This is captured via a specific type of service contact that is entered against the service subscription.  This can be entered at the time of ordering, or later.

In Emersion, service-level contacts can have a sub-type.  The sub-type is IPND Contact.  Users are required to enter an IPND contact on the Configuration step of an order.

General Business Rules

• The service contact contains limited fields required to meet the obligations of storing information for IPND.
• Postal or unstructured addresses are not permitted.
• If no IPND contact is entered, the system will use the Primary Contact as the IPND Service contact.

See the full list of data elements and their business rules here. 

IPND Quarantine

Sometimes the IPND will return errors in an IPND file that is sent back to Emersion. 

An IPND Quarantine page in Cumulus provides the visibility for users to review and correct errors from the IPND.  Typically, error files send to Emersion from the IPND contain details of services that the IPND are unsure if the customer is the owner of the service.

Reports

Two reports are provided with the module.

Onboarding

For help onboarding the module and getting ready to prepare your instance of Emersion to send data to the IPND, please see this article. 

Related Pages

• Page:
  Onboarding: IPND
• Page:
  IPND Data and Business Rules
• Page:
  Managing IPND Errors with Quarantine
• Page:
  IPND Module
• Page:
  Enter an IPND Contact in Cumulus
• Page:
  IPND Fundamentals