Abbreviations used :

Q1. Who are the potential customers for OSSN™?
A. The OSSN™ service is aimed at business customers or government entities that have an extensive and frequent dialog with their customers.
B. Businesses that advertise their products/services through various media channels and would like to encourage consumers to call them more frequently.
C. Examples of businesses: Banks; Investment houses; Insurance companies; Healthcare – medical centers and clinics; Hotels; Airlines; Travel agencies; Car rentals; Car leasing; Car dealers; Taxi companies; Bus services; Railway; Department stores; Retail chains; Deliveries; Restaurants; Ticket reservation; Service providers; Media – Newspapers, Magazines, Cable & Satellite TV; Construction companies.
D. Government: Social security; Employment service; Road maintenance; Licensing Office; Municipalities.
E. Advertising campaigns and time limited services (sale of apartments or houses in a project).

Q2. Are OSSNs to be sold to individuals?
A. No. OSSNs are limited to business and government entities.

Q3. Why should an Operator be interested in launching the OSS™ service?
A. The OSSN™ is a convenient add-on which provides businesses with easy to remember access numbers, substantially increases the number of calls from consumers, and results in increased traffic (and revenues) for the operators.
B. An increase in traffic of over 20% to businesses through OSSN™ numbers has been observed.
C. OSS™ will pay the operator a monthly fee for each OSSN™ that has been activated.

Q4. Who will promote the OSS™ service?
A. The national OSS™ will establish the service, market it, promote it to potential customers, sell it and collect the monthly fee.
B. There will be no change to the existing operator-customer service/contract.
C. There will be no change to the interconnection agreements between operators.

Q5. Why should an Operator cooperate with OSS™ rather than introduce a short code number on its own?
A. A short code limited to one specific operator, will not be attractive to the business customer, and will not generate substantial traffic increase to the operator.
B. The strength of OSSN™ and its attractiveness to the business customer is the ability of its consumers to call-in from any phone, using any available network, whether fixed line or cellular. The OSSN™ will also work through Email and Website.
C. OSS™ will sign agreements with all operators. The national OSS™ will establish the service, market it, promote it to potential customers, sell it and collect the monthly fee.

Q6. What are the technical limitations/problems of OSSN™ implementation?
A. There are no technical problems. Each OSSN™ is identified with an existing common phone number. The operation is based on the Routing tables located in the Switching system (or SMS Center). The routing tables are updated (usually through Network Operation Center) upon activation of a OSSN™.
B. The OSS™ system is fully operating for over 12 months and functions perfectly . The debugging has been finished in the early stages of system deployment.
C. The system provides all of the following services: voice, fax, SMS, website, email and post.

Q7. Is the OSS™ service patented?
A. Yes the OSS™ service is covered by a Patent (pending) all over the world by PCT and also by the EPO.
B. The Patents are owned by OSS™ Company and are licensed to the national OSS™.

Q8. What is the experience with OSSN™ in other countries?
A. OSSN™ introduction has been very fast and its acceptance immediate. Initially the companies advertised their OSSNs alongside their normal phone numbers. However, they switched to the exclusive use of their OSSN™ after a short time, being convinced of its acceptance by the customers.
B. Consumers have accepted the new concept of OSSN™ and are calling-in more. Statistics have shown an increase of greater than 20% in traffic to the OSSN™ numbers within a 3 month period. A Continuous quarterly increase in traffic of more than 15% has been observed in several consecutive quarters.
C. The operators are very pleased with the service as it generates more revenues for them, without any investment on their side.

Q9. Can the OSSN™ service be a toll free number?
A. Yes, the OSSN™ can be routed to a toll free number if the company has a suitable agreement with the Toll free number operator.

Q10. Is there an additional cost to the consumer by using OSSN™?
A. No. The consumer will pay the same as dialing directly to the regular number.

Q11. What are the technical requirements from the operator?
A. Preferably have DTMF capability in its network. (For old type of telephones and exchanges, using pulse dialing, that are missing the * and #, there is an ITU recommendation: * is replaced by 11 and # by 12)
B. Link new OSSN™ to the telephone number provided by the client within 24 hours.
C. Maintain the OSSN™ properly.
D. Repair any fault within x hours.

Q12. Does the operator need to dedicate a new line for each OSSN™?
A. No. Each new OSSN™ is using the existing line the company already has and the call is just routed to it.

Q13. Is it required to modify Digital exchange systems to support the OSSN™?
It depends on the exchange. All can recognize the *. In some cases, to make the process more efficient along the network, the * is translated to a stream of a few digits for example, 1212, which precedes the actual number.

Q14. What is difference between ONOI from e-num service and OSSN™?
Citing from http://www.enum.org/index.html : “ENUM unifies traditional telephony and next-generation IP networks, and provides a critical framework for mapping and processing diverse network addresses. It transforms the telephone number—the most basic and commonly-used communications address—into a universal identifier that can be used across many different devices and applications (voice, fax, mobile, email, text messaging, location-based services and the Internet). ENUM allows telephone numbers to be resolved to URLs using a Domain Name System (DNS)-based architecture. By placing telephone numbers into the DNS, ENUM can facilitate interoperability for a wide range of applications including Voice over IP (Void), video, presence, and instant messaging.
Electronic Numbering (ENUM), as defined in RFC 3761, is a relatively simple protocol involving two core concepts:
¡¤ the process of creating a domain name from a TN and resolving it to an Internet address (a uniform resource identifier, or URI) using DNS technology
¡¤ the hosting of ENUM domain names in the e164.arpa domain

For example, the telephone number +1 (202) 555-1212 will be converted into the ENUM domain name 2.1.2.1.5.5.5.2.0.2.1.e164.arpa. A DNS query to that domain name will ultimately resolve to one or more DNS records (NAPTR records), which will provide a URI. The domain name 2.1.2.1.5.5.5.2.0.2.1.e164.arpa may resolve to the SIP URI sip:12125551212@voipcarrier.net. The SIP proxy service will then use the URI to establish a session between the originating SIP user and the terminating SIP user.”

As can be seen from this quote, this is an attempt (that started mid 2006 in the USA) to facilitate the connection with VOIP. It is based on a phone number, but is actually longer than the original phone number. Our OSSN™ (One Smart Star™ Number) idea is to provide a SHORT, easy to remember number, that will become a new, simple to advertise and easy to access identity. If the ENUM idea picks-up and gets approved, we will simply extend our OSSN™ to this service as well.