Which CNAM source?

Any thoughts on what the best CNAM service is for FreePBX? I’m hoping there’s a service that’s pretty good at identifying SPAM calls so we don’t waste minutes on those. Does OpenCNAM do this? Can TrueCNAM be used with FreePBX? What else is out there?

BTW, we’re using VOIP.ms and while I see they have CNAM, it appears that other providers are less expensive if you have a server set up.

I’m going to apologize to everyone up front.

I had a bad experience with OpenCNAM having problems getting my FreePBX box to work with them. Support was slow to the point that I would respond and their response would not happen until the next day. After several days then they figured they needed their “FreePBX guru” and he/she never responded.

Just sayin’ that that was my experience. (Sorry, OpenCNAM.) I had them refund me and close my account.

OpenCNAM does not flag SPAM calls, but the experience I have had has been pretty good, stable, and reliable for CNAM lookups.

I use provider CNAM for all my trunks (primarily Flowroute and VoIP.ms) other than Google Voice, but my volume is low enough that it doesn’t make an appreciable difference in costs–a fraction of a cent per call for good data.

I do use TrueCNAM for spam scoring and have found it pretty accurate. However, I would not rely on them for actual name information, as their coverage is still very small and reliant on contributions to their DB. Even though they claim to have a large number of providers who do contribute to their DB, several test numbers I ran through them failed to give any information.

I’ve just switched my Google Voice trunk over to pull CNAM data from OpenCNAM instead of the trunk because Google doesn’t do CNAM lookups. Waiting for my first inbound call to see how it works. Tests on opencnam.com passed with flying colors when I threw several test numbers at it, including some that I know have never touched VoIP (and so couldn’t have been contributed by VoIP providers), like an AT&T cell phone, landlines from ILECs and CLECs in several towns, plus of course VoIP provider numbers, etc., and all were looked up successfully and accurately.

I can’t tell from Google whether OpenCNAM actually does real LIDB lookups or not (they don’t advertise doing so, and older discussions on VoIP forums seemed to indicate they didn’t as of 5ish years ago), but if they don’t, then they have somehow managed to assemble an extremely comprehensive database that’s on par with the LIDB.

(FWIW, I have IncrediblePBX.)

what about interfacing with a service like 800notes.com? instead of cnam, I check against phone numbers. If I get a hit from 800notes.com, I terminate the call. If I don’t get a hit on 800notes.com but the number looks fishy, I send them to voicemail.

800notes.com have a few false positives… but for my home pbx smam filter, I can live with a few of those. Not sure how it would work in a business environment.

  • jack