PART III REGULATIONS 3.0 3.1 National Numbering Plan The policy supports both an international and a domestic numbering plan, which is designed to develop customer identification and addressing mechanisms for telecommunications information. Currently, the national dialing plan is designed to identify the country, the information of the Service Provider or Operator and the customer. The LTA is tasked with the responsibility to develop numbering schemes that ensure the identification of operators and customers in call processing. Each processed telecommunications call must have a numbering format for identification and billing purposes. 3.2 National Numbering Administration The LTA shall develop, manage and implement the National Numbering Plan, taking into consideration the following: a. Designation of sufficient capacity to meet growth in demand for telephone services, taking into account the characteristics of available technologies; the forecast growth of population; the geographic distribution of demand; and the prospect of increasing telephone density, particularly in the more prosperous business communities; b. Designation of numbering capacity for the future introduction of services, which may be new to Liberia, but has been proved to be commercially successful in other countries; c. Spare numbering capacity in the form of codes and number ranges that are not associated with any known services and therefore potentially suitable for unforeseen expansion or the introduction of brand new services; d. Significance in the first few digits of national numbers to enable callers to recognize service characteristics and call charges, and for network operators to be able to route calls sufficiently; e. A neutral position in the allocation of numbering capacity, to support fair competition where multiple operators are competing to provide services to existing and new customers; f. Independent identification and association of codes and number-blocks with geographic areas and non geographic services, so that the Numbering Plan is not locked in to any structure that network operators use to provide services, nor to the names of particular exchanges. 3.3 Numbering Plan Designations The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has established +231 as the Country Code for Liberia. Prior to the existence of the LTA, the MP&T established “00” as the International Escape Codes. International ICT organizations have established Internet Protocol (IP) Addressing schemes. This policy 22