6 mins read
For enterprise service providers, numbering is now a continuity problem, and a growth lever.
If you are a CPaaS vendor, a UCaaS company, an MSP, or a systems integrator selling voice into European enterprises, the phone numbers under your contracts have quietly become both a risk and an opportunity.
In France and Croatia, regulators have changed who is allowed to hold those numbers and who is accountable for them. There is a straightforward operating model that solves this in both markets today, and it scales cleanly into the next one.
What ARCEP and HAKOM are changing in France and Croatia
France
ARCEP’s updated national numbering plan took effect on January 1, 2026, tightening caller ID authentication for French mobile numbers. A call that cannot be authenticated is now masked or fails to connect.
The pressure is building. ARCEP has logged more than 19,000 spoofing reports in January 2025, now its most common consumer complaint.
Number reselling is prohibited. If your French numbers reach you through a reseller chain, your traffic is exposed to masking and failed calls.
Move to GHS. Compliant numbering, authenticated calls, no reseller risk.
Croatia
The HAKOM numbering framework sits inside the same EU-wide shift, under the Electronic Communications Act (OG 76/22), which transposes the European Electronic Communications Code.
HAKOM makes primary allocations to operators and that, through secondary allocation, operators may assign addresses and numbers to other operators or end users.
For an enterprise service provider, that is not a compliance footnote. It’s the difference between customers whose calls keep connecting through a regulatory shift and customers whose calls do not.
It is also the difference between an offer you can extend into ten more countries next year and one that stalls at the next carrier negotiation.
The hidden fragility in “our upstream carrier holds the numbers”
Most service providers did not design their numbering model, they inherited it. Numbers come through an upstream carrier or aggregator that holds the regulatory relationship, and the service provider resells them under its own brand. That works right up until the ground shifts underneath.
When it does, the service provider is exposed in ways its contracts do not cover:
- Your customers’ continuity is a fourth-party problem. If your upstream carrier’s compliance posture falls short of new rules, the numbers under your customers’ contracts can be deprioritized, blocked, or suspended. Your enterprise customers call you when the phones stop working, not the carrier.
- No audit trail you can put your name on. Lawful intercept, identity verification, and registration sit with someone else. When a regulator or an enterprise procurement team asks “who is accountable for this number,” you’re forwarding the question, not answering it.
- Expansion friction on every deal. An enterprise customer asks you to add three new countries. Each one is a fresh carrier relationship, a new compliance model, and a new point of failure. Deals slow down at exactly the moment they should close faster.
None of this shows up on your monthly invoice from the carrier. It shows up the day a regulator tightens the rules, which is exactly what’s already happening in France and Croatia.
The GHS operating model: who holds what
BICS’s Global Hosting Solution splits the work clearly. The service provider holds the numbering rights, the direct regulator relationship, the audit trail and LOAs, and the commercial relationship with the end customer.
BICS runs the platform underneath. SIP trunk and PSTN delivery, license application support, and provisioning, portability, and compliance operations.
You get a defensible, auditable numbering position without becoming a licensed carrier in every market you sell into. The audit trail, the lawful intercept posture, and the registration records are yours, defensible in front of any enterprise procurement team or regulator on demand.
GHS and Operator Connect: provisioning without the carrier renegotiation
This is where GHS pairs directly with Microsoft Teams Operator Connect. Instead of negotiating a new carrier relationship every time an enterprise customer needs Teams calling in a new country, GHS gives operator connect providers one numbering construct that plugs straight into Operator Connect provisioning.
Compared with Direct Routing, where you manage your own SBCs and carrier relationships end to end, GHS lets you offer Teams Operator Connect calling with less CAPEX and OPEX, since BICS runs infrastructure it has already operated in production for years.
A single customer-level service fee replaces the per-number charge stack, and your unit economics improve as your DID volume grows. For a CPaaS vendor weighing Operator Connect vs Direct Routing, GHS is what makes Operator Connect workable across many countries without a fresh build in each one.
Wholesale numbering and toll-free hosting under one construct
GHS is not only a compliance answer. It is hosted numbering for service providers, built as a wholesale layer.
It works as a wholesale VoIP provider construct for service providers who need wholesale VoIP termination and toll free hosting alongside standard DIDs, all under one numbering rights model.
Instead of managing separate arrangements for a cloud communications platform’s toll free numbers, its DIDs, and its Teams calling numbers, GHS gives toll free service providers and cloud communications providers one hosted numbering relationship that covers all three.
How it runs day to day: MyNumbers
Day to day, ordering, provisioning, number portability, compliance records, CDRs, and inventory all run through BICS’s MyNumbers platform.
This is the operational layer that makes the compliance model usable at volume, rather than something your team manages manually, market by market.
What it takes to get live
Croatia’s rollout follows a phased path. Licence and pre-migration, implementation, go-live, and post-migration, running roughly 18 to 22 weeks end to end. France runs on the same underlying construct.
pre-migration
Why act on France and Croatia now
Number reselling has been prohibited in France since 2023 for every new number put into service. From July 2028, the ban extends to all numbers, including those issued before the change.
Enforcement is tightening in parallel. Since January 1, 2026, ARCEP’s updated numbering plan requires stronger caller ID authentication for French mobile numbers. Calls that can’t be authenticated are masked or fail to connect. Spoofing reports have passed 19,000 since January 2025, now ARCEP’s most common consumer complaint.
On the Croatia side, HAKOM’s framework is already live. Service providers who act now are not ahead of a future deadline; they are catching up, using a numbering model already proven in production in France. Switzerland (ITFS) is due in Q3 2026, with Belgium and Sweden following in Q4 this year.
Why BICS
BICS runs this across a 120+ country footprint. GHS is not a one-off fix for two markets; it is a repeatable commercial and technical construct.
The European CPaaS market is expected to reach USD 26.3 billion by 2030, growing at roughly 35 percent a year. In that market, CPaaS vendors and UCaaS companies who can prove direct, clean regulatory ownership of their numbers will win more enterprise RFPs than those still routing everything through someone else’s compliance posture.
The takeaway
The old question for a service provider was “who is the cheapest to route my numbers through?” The real question now is who is accountable when the rules change and whether your offer can grow into new markets without renegotiating that answer each time.
Hosting your customers’ numbers under GHS is not about swapping one carrier for another. It is about making sure your customers’ continuity and your own growth do not depend on someone else’s compliance posture.
Conclusion
Numbering in France and Croatia has moved from a compliance detail to a continuity and growth decision. ARCEP and HAKOM now expect the party serving the customer to also own the number and the accountability that comes with it. GHS gives you that ownership directly, with BICS running the infrastructure underneath, so your customers stay connected through the shift and your offer scales into the next market without a fresh carrier negotiation each time.
Talk to BICS about hosting your French and Croatian numbers under GHS, and get a commercial model built for your specific customer base.
