Bob K <
SPA...@Rochester.RR.com> writes:
>Very seldom I call myself! But a week ago as a demo I called the TW
>number from the cell phone, and found, while the number displayed was
>correct, a name was displayed that I have never heard of. Normally, I
>would expect on a call from a cell phone to have possible something
>like the city and state for the phone.
>Today I reran the test, and the display name is still screwed up on
>the TW number. However, in calling the netTalk number, it displays
>"WIRELESS CALLER" -- which is what I would expect.
....
Welcome to the wonderful world of CNAM lookup. The CNAM data doesn't
transfer along with a call, only the calling number does.
Basicly, each telco keeps a database of lookups of CNAMs. When a call
connects and the telco terminating the call needs to send callerID data,
they need to do a database dip out of a variety of sources to get the
proper data.
The ILECs probably are the most correct, as they have a huge database
of their own CNAM data, and are willing to pay the CNAM database dip
fee from a CLEC or other ILEC to find the CNAM data to feed
along. (wholesale rates of these are on the order of $0.002 to $0.006
a database dip).
Now, a CLEC may not feel like paying for the database dip, so they
may just look at the flag on the # if it is a mobile number or not,
and display "WIRELESS CALLER" and figure that nobody on mobile
cares about caller ID delivery, because everybody has their contact
books all setup for anybody they care about.
Or, they may cache old database dip data they got ages ago and stored
away so they didn't have to pay for new lookups on the number.
Or a CLEC may cheap out by going to something like
listyourself.net,
which takes some public info, some user submitted data, to give data
out of questionable value.
There is no "central" database of CNAM data, unlike some of the other
telco style data that LECs have to subscribe to. But the terminating
telco may do a variety of things, from ILEC style full-proper lookups
to tossing up random data.
As to fixing up things. You could figure out where your such-and-such
telco gets its CNAM data, and try to contact that company to see if
you can get your data updated there properly. Or maybe your LEC can do
that for you. Ie. I'd expect the CLEC I use to go out and do that for
me, but that is just how they operate. I would expect an ILEC to do
so, but only after explaining myself 20 times trying to get to the
right person that can do it.
--
Doug McIntyre
do...@themcintyres.us