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NPAC Ported Data Versus Trestle’s Phone Validation API

We are often asked how our phone metadata, including line type and carrier data, compares with NPAC ported data. NPAC ported data is the authoritative source of carrier data in the U.S., so why should we choose Trestle’s Phone Validation API, which seems to provide similar phone metadata? We’ll discuss why.

Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) function that manages the routing of phone calls and text messages in the North American Numbering Plan. The NPAC is the world’s largest database of ported phone numbers, containing information on around 1 billion numbers for about 1,600 service providers. NPAC data can be accessed for particular uses, and only qualified businesses and organizations are authorized to receive it. 

In addition to routing the calls and text messages, they are considered an authoritative source of carrier data that can be queried by businesses for various use cases given this porting information they manage. However, NPAC lacks visibility for carriers like Bandwidth, which has around 100 million phones. They lease those numbers to Pinger, Skype, or other over-the-top carriers (OTTs), which is very common, and they are not considered ‘ported,’ so they will show up as Bandwidth itself, according to NPAC. There are 700+ carriers like Skype, just in the U.S., covering around 200M phones (20% of the U.S. numbers), which NPAC data would not be able to identify. 

Further, the line type information will also be limited with NPAC due to the limited carrier fidelity. So, for example, a lot of these phones will be marked as Landline/Wireline when, in fact, they can receive SMS/text messages, resulting in incorrect categorization of these phones. This can be a significant lost opportunity for marketing campaigns when a business filters out these numbers from their SMS campaigns. For applications, this can result in unnecessary friction if the company thinks they cannot send a text to the phone for 2FA and also for incorrect risk categorization for identity verification/fraud prevention purposes in your risk rule engines or data science models. 

Through our data partners, Trestle is able to identify these nuances and return accurate carrier (both ported and subleased) and line type data, including Mobile, Landline, fixed VoIP, Non-fixed VoIP, Toll-Free, and Premium. To make it concrete, here are a few numbers and the carrier/line type data returned by NPAC versus Trestle.

Further, Trestle provides a Phone Activity Score, which aggregates phone activity (calls made, texts sent/received, etc.) across various partner networks, as well as ported and disconnected signals. It is highly predictive in determining whether the phone is connected or disconnected. We have seen it work very well for various use cases, including outbound dialing, and in the context of fraud, it correlates very well with potentially risky phones. 

There are other benefits beyond this added data fidelity. Trestle’s Phone Validation API is real-time, so businesses do not have to worry about taking the files on a regular cadence from the NPAC administrator and keeping them up-to-date. Trestle’s carrier and line type data are refreshed within 15 minutes of any change, and the APIs are high-scale and have low latency, with the ability to support as high as 1,000 QPS, which can serve any use case. 

More information is available on the Phone Validation API page, or you can start a free trial. If you have any questions, contact us at support@trestleiq.com.