If you’re an Internet service provider, call center or wireline/wireless companies, or businesses with local customers dialing their 800 number, you need to have the tools to properly design a network.

Having a comprehensive source for such information is invaluable -- certainly you wouldn’t attempt such a project without one. The developer of one of the very first Local Calling Data products, i2Gemini has developed the Local Call Analyzer, which company officials say offers “the most accurate, reliable and innovative products of its kind.”

One of the reasons this is so important is that companies need to know when and where there is a cost-per-minute associated with a "local" call, so they can plan their strategies accordingly In such a situation, LCA provides the answers: “LCA not only supports all types of local calling plans found in the residential and business tariffs, but it displays the rate tables for any given NPA (News - Alert) and NXX combination,” company officials say.

The i2Gemini's LCA contains what company officials describe as “a complete up-to-date set of local calling area information for the virtually all of the United States and Canada including more than 1,500 ILECs and 2,000 CLECs.”

More specifically, LCA includes NPA/NXXs local to any number, local calling rates (flat, measured or metered; business or residential), identification of which NPA/NXXs are local to your POPs, identification of local service between any two points, determination of optimum placement of POPs to maximize coverage and reverse look-up allowing determination of who can call a given NPA/NXX locally.

So obviously there’s more to it than simply “This will cost you 34 cents per minute.”

The product is offered in both desktop and database formats, company officials say, “with affordable and flexible licensing arrangements.” LCA can be delivered monthly by CD or FTP. One advantage to this system, i2Gemini officials say, is that it makes it easy for companies to integrate the information into an existing system, “eliminating the need to spend valuable capital dollars on costly upgrades.”