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SID and BID Code Assignment Responsibilities Clarified!
Agreement on the administrators of codes critical for cellular network operations and billing.
July 7, 2014 – IFAST has been recognized as the sole US and international SID code administrator as a result of discussions with Cibernet. This has been documented by a ‘CIBER Notice’ issued on June 18, 2014, entitled ‘Clarification of SIDs and BIDs’. The CIBER Notice recognizes IFAST as the SID code administrator for codes within the range of 00001 to 32767. Since codes within this range are US transmittable codes, IFAST assigns and manages this limited resource. Codes 32768 and above are non-transmittable and are used as BID codes. This range of BID codes falls within the assignment and management responsibility of Cibernet.
BID codes used in CIBER and TAP intercarrier billing records are numbers that are critical to identifying cellular systems for billing purposes. SID codes may be used for billing purposes, but this limited resource is best used as the base station identifier for some cellular radio technologies. Ensuring uniqueness of the codes, and identifying the assignee and administrator are both important to the functioning of cellular networks, of all technologies. IFAST maintains the SID code database for the FCC and is listed as a SID Administrator on the FCC website. IFAST and Cibernet have both provided assignment and administration services for about 20 years.
The agreement clarifies that SID codes between 0 and 32767, that can be transmitted by mobile equipment, are managed by IFAST. All remaining codes, from 32768 through 99999, that can be used for billing purposes, are managed by Cibernet.
About IFAST- IFAST is a Maryland-based non-profit that manages International Roaming and SID codes for the global wireless industry. It was founded in 1996 by three industry veterans, who are still involved with the organization – Col Ed Hall, David Crowe and Bernardo Martinez. The organization is led by Syed Zaeem Hosain (CTO of Aeris) and also has Art Prest, formerly of CTIA, as a member of the board. Advisors to IFAST are other industry veterans Gary Pellegrino and Dennis Fu. For more information, visit www.ifast.org , or see IFAST on twitter or LinkedIn.
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