Neustar began inside Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, as the group that ran the plumbing behind American phone numbers. It sat between rival carriers as a neutral party. When a customer switched carriers and kept the same number, Neustar's database told every network where calls to that number should go. By the time it filed to go public in 2005, cell phones were everywhere, and each switch passed through a company most callers had never heard of.

Born at Lockheed Martin

The business started in 1996 as a Lockheed Martin division called the Communications Industry Services group. Managers and an investor group led by Warburg Pincus later bought it out, and it became Neustar. Its value came from neutrality. Carriers that fought each other for customers all trusted Neustar to run shared systems, such as the clearinghouse for telephone number portability. The company was based in Sterling, Virginia, near Washington's Dulles airport.

Twenty-Two Dollars, Then Private

Neustar priced its IPO at $22 a share in June 2005 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NSR. The offering raised about $605 million. Over the next decade it added internet address, marketing data and security businesses. In 2017 the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital took Neustar private in a deal worth about $2.9 billion. In December 2021 TransUnion, the credit bureau, bought most of Neustar for $3.1 billion.

Cover: The Star of the Magi, Jan van de Velde, II. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a guiding star (the new star of the phone network).