For Immediate Release
ATIS 1200 G Street, NW Suite 500 Washington, DC 20005	Contact: Trish Gessner Phone: 202-434-8851 E-mail: tgessner@atis.org www.atis.org

New Reference Provides State Regulators with Baseline of Back-Office Transfer Standards

November 22, 2004, Washington – The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions ( ATIS) today announced the release of its Local Service Migration Guidelines, a reference that will assist state regulators and telecom carriers to manage the seamless transfer of customers from one wireline service provider to another.

ATIS’ Local Service Migration Task Force, made up of numerous representatives from Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC) and Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC), worked for more than a year to develop a how-to guide comprised of existing ATIS and other organizations’ standards. The resulting guidelines provide clear step-by-step direction for various local service migration scenarios, including: directory listings, local number portability, E-9-1-1 data and a variety of bundled and unbundled services.

“Many of our members operate in multiple states that have individual regulatory requirements,” said Susan M. Miller, president and CEO of ATIS. “In recent years individual state regulatory bodies have discussed or created technical requirements for telecommunications service migration. Having a consistent set of baseline guidelines to use as a reference for the technical aspects of local service migration will ease the process for our ILEC and CLEC members.”

"As an existing standards body, ATIS was the logical home for the start of this industry effort to create guidelines for local service migration,” said Jim Mahler, senior staff consultant at Verizon. “From a business perspective, it greatly simplifies our ability to work in several states if they adopt these guidelines as a baseline and include enhancements, such as establishing timeframes. In addition, the hope is that the guidelines will help reduce the time and resources that the collaborative effort currently takes."

The scope of the initial release of this document is limited to wireline voice to wireline voice service migrations. Subsequent releases will address additional products and/or services.

The Local Service Migration Guidelines can be downloaded from the ATIS website. http://www.atis.org/obf/docs/lsop/lsmg1.zip

About ATIS
ATIS is a technical planning and standards development organization that is committed to rapidly developing and promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and related information technologies industry worldwide using a pragmatic, flexible and open approach. Over 1,100 participants from more than 350 communications companies are active in ATIS’ 20 industry committees, and its Incubator Solutions Program. www.atis.org