Universal personal telecommunications (UPT) is a special segment of the international telephone number space which has been set aside for universal personal telephone numbers. This service has been allocated country code +878. UPT numbers differ significantly from Personal Numbers which are embedded as an Area Code within the national Telephone numbering plan. For example Area Code 070 within the UK plan.[1]
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) introduced this concept in 2001, referring to it as "global number portability". However, number portability normally refers to the service of keeping an existing phone number after moving service to another provider.
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A UPT phone number is intended to be an internationally consistent number which an individual can acquire, which can then be used for contacting them via telephone or other services. A UPT provider basically must have the ability to receive connections from the international telephone network, and then forward the called number to the individual's real number. This would have a similar effect to toll free numbers in not having a geographic connection to particular ranges of numbers, yet a UPT call would still incur a charge.
By year 2007 only one body, VISIONng [1] (an international association), has been allocated a range within the +878 country code. The delegation of +87810 was requested by VISIONng chairman Herwart Wermescher and was confirmed by Counsellor, SG2 of ITU-TSB Richard Hill on May 21, 2002. The company's Sentiro website [2] currently allows individuals to rent UPT numbers. The number costs £12 (GBP) a year with a one off registration fee of £10 (excl. VAT). This also includes an experimental ENUM service. Since 10/2007 some 700,000 users of the VoIP pioneers FWD are provisioned with the global country code +87810. FWD’ers [3] can now be contacted from all VoIP ENUM enabled networks, without the callers having to find and add a prefix. They have to dial +878101393 followed by a 6 digit FWD subscriber number.
The UPT service profile is a record that contains all information related to a UPT user, which information is required to provide that user with UPT service such as subscriptions to basic and supplementing services and call-routing preferences.
Each UPT service profile is associated with a single UPT number.
The UPT number uniquely identifies a UPT user and that is used to place a call to, or to forward a call to, that user.
A user may have multiple UPT numbers (such as a business UPT number for business calls and a private UPT number for private calls). In the case of multiple numbers, each UPT number is considered, from a network vantage point, to identify a distinct UPT user, even if all such numbers identify the same person or entity.
UPT environment is the environment within which the UPT service facilities are offered, consisting of combinations of networks and UPT service control facilities that, when combined, enable UPT users to make use of telecommunication services offered by these networks.
To the UPT user the UPT environment appears as a single global network that provides personal mobility. However, when utilising telecommunication services, the UPT network user may be limited by restrictions imposed by the network, by the capabilities of the terminal and network used, or by regulatory requirements.