I set up a FreePBX for a client about a year ago. They contacted me and told me that my name, not their company name, is appearing on the caller ID display of people they call. It is showing the correct phone number.
I contacted the provider, Phonepower aka Broadvoice and asked them to fix it. They are saying on a SIP trunk, the outbound caller ID text is set on the PBX. I find this hard to believe because if true, I could set the outbound caller ID text to “PresidentObama”.
They are 100% full of crap. In the US all caller ID name is done by the carrier you are calling to. They do a LIDB lookup to get the name associated with the number. Their are literally hundreds of not thousands of LIDB out their and updating a simple name can be a real pain and can take weeks or months and never get them all updated but its up to your carrier to update the Databases.
I think this is dependant on the provider, some allow you to pass the CID from your system, some do not. How do you think all the spammers change the names on the fly? I even receive calls from my own number once in a while… lol
Anyway, I think you can set this under outbound routes, you may also want to check under trunks / trunk name and look there, you will find “outbound caller ID”.
Its not up to your carrier you have service with on Caller ID Name. CID Name is 100% up to the carrier that the call terminates on and almost all of them will reject whatever name you send and some will reject a call if you send a name at all.
Here how its works with my services… and Tony is correct. Lets say I have a customer that has a 20 DID number block that we have assigned to the PBX… we can assign any of those phone numbers as the outbound main phone number and we can even assign different out bound “phone numbers” for certain extensions BUT we have to tell our carrier what we want the callerID database name to be for the number and then when a receiving carrier looks it up it tells them the name we “registered” with our carrier. I hope that makes sense to you…
I understand that, but a trunk is a trunk. Why does the trunk have the option for you to set the outbound CID if it has no effect on the other end?, as Tony mentioned, some providers can reject a call if you provide it.
I just presumed, setting this may have some effect on your outbound CID. I know there is places you can set and override CIDs, but now I am confused as to the whole point of being able to set something you can’t use?
I know SipStaion sets your CID for you, that can’t be overridden as far as I know. I thought some Providers just passed the CID coming from your PBX, but apparently it does not happen that way.
The only way I can see it having any use, would be across IAX trunks, but I have not read that anywhere.
Please do not confuse CID with CID Name and CID Number. CID is generic. For example SIPStation lets you send any CID Number that you want. You can not send a CID Name as almost no carrier will accept sending a name and as I said some are extreme and will block a call if you send a Name.
That’s what I was trying to say as well… I can pass different numbers out but the “name” that is associated with it we provide to our carrier and they register it in a database for lookups. To further make the point I must actually turn on INBOUND CNAM lookups for my client DID’s if I want the name looked up… and that’s is exactly what Tony was saying
