Although most SIP trunk providers will tell you showing your company name in CID is not possible I have read several articles that say it’s not true.
From several articles I’ve read the truth seems to be that SIP providers would need to pay Telcos that give them access to the PSTN for access to their CID data.
AND,… because SIP provs want to keep their costs and prices down they don’t “poney up” and tell me that putting my company name on outbound CID is impossible.
Does anyone know what the truth is?
If SIP trunk providers really can put a name on CID can anyone point me to a provider that does? (have company name in outbound CID)
I have a friend who has an Avaya IP office hybrid (Telco trunks) and he is running/showing 2 numbers and companies on the same PBX with settings in IP Office.
Would a “hypbrid” Asterisk box that used the Telco instead of SIP be able to do this?
The problem is that although the Caller ID NUMBER (and ANI, which is often but not always the same as the Caller ID) is sent along with the call setup information, we still have this insane system where Caller ID NAME is not sent with the call, but stored in databases maintained by the major telcos. I would suggest that now that the administration has changed, it might be a good time for someone to petition the FCC to require the Caller ID NAME to be transmitted along with the Caller ID number and the ANI. One could certainly make the case that the current system isn’t working because so many calls come in without a valid name. But I digress…
In order for the called party to receive Caller ID name information, two things have to happen. One is that the name has to initially be loaded into the database, which as I say is controlled by the big telcos. If you are an ILEC (Baby Bell or independent telco) or a CLEC (competitive local phone company) you can get your numbers in that database. If you are a VoIP company you probably cannot unless you can convince the CLEC that you obtain numbers from to load the data for you, and some CLECs don’t even do that for many of their retail customers, and certainly can’t be bothered to do so for numbers they are selling in bulk to a VoiP provider.
The other thing is that the called party’s company has to do a data dip to get the Caller ID name. Think about the outrageous rates telcos charge for text messaging and you will get some clue as to how reasonable those charges might be. Some companies may charge a cent or two to get a 15 character name - even if it’s only a tenth of a cent it’s still outrageous given the small amount of data transferred, and in many cases the contracts companies have to sign say they can’t cache the data - so if you get ten calls in one day from the same person, your provider has to pay for ten data dips (when you are talking about hundreds of thousands of calls, this starts to turn into real money). It’s a scam and a total ripoff in my opinion, and wouldn’t even be necessary if the PSTN companies (local and long distance) would just send the doggone name data along with the number in the first place.
Keep in mind that phone companies (and long distance companies) wouldn’t even transmit Caller ID numbers to each other until the FCC ordered them to do so, and you will understand why nothing short of an FCC order will ever resolve the Caller ID name mess. You want your SIP provider to pay extortion to the major phone companies to send your name, with no guarantee that everyone you call will receive it anyway - I say if it’s that important to you then perhaps you should get PSTN lines and pay the phone companies their pound of flesh to send those magic 15 characters. Instead of bugging your SIP provider(s) about this, consider spending the equivalent amount of energy in writing a letter to, or petitioning the FCC to require all telecommunications providers that are currently required to send a Caller ID number in call setup information to also send the Caller ID name. That way other VoIP customers won’t wind up paying extra to support your requirements and in the end we might all get universal Caller ID name delivery, if enough people would do this.
Just my opinion!
I did however find a SIP provider that said they would/could do the name thing (Bandwidth.com). I wasn’t “bugging” my SIP provider about this feature. I just wanted the truth. One of the requirements of this system was Caller ID Name and I couldn’t seem to get a straight answer.
I don’t like the Baby Bells much. In fact I used to work for Cincinnati Bell.
This whole project I am working on was designed to become somewhat independent of CinBell. So, there was no way I was going to buy a T1 or PRI from them. In fact I just talked to a CinBell rep today and they won’t fraction a T1 anymore because it’s “too much trouble for them”.
I am about as old school as you can get at telco engineering. I spent 20 years on both the vendor and provider side so I have a good perspective on things.
These database dips you are talking about are all SS-7 messaging and are part of ISUP ISDN User Part message. It’s not the FCC, it’s Bellcore/Telcordia. There is a reason why the traditional TDM network is as reliable and interoperable as it is. Name CID is a basically a hack and that is the reason you can’t get name info on wireless. I had not read any RFC on SS& in years I would not be surprised if eventually this is changed or in the process of being changed however it is a huge task.
WRT FCC mandates for caller ID is not exactly correct the ID information was always sent in the ‘charging number field’ that data goes back to hand ticketed calls.
Another perspective on charges per text message on wireless. The wireless companies are all losing money (exclusion of Verizon Wireless). The cost of 3G upgrades is staggering. You should be glad that text subsidizes data or your data plan would be cost around $400/mo
Bell’s can’t deliver a packet based voice offering under tariff, these are untariffed offerings by non regulated business units because packet voice can’t meet landline regulatory requirements. The only way to deliver fractional service is to use a 1/0 (that’s DS1 to DS0) DACS ports, 1/0 port costs is over $1000 per DS0. It is very expensive to de-mux the high rate TDM backbones. Most of the interoffice traffic is at OC-48 speed and only grooms down to DS-1’s.