my phone number is showing up as outbound caller ID name...

Posts: 85 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Mar 29, 2008 Posts: 85

since last week, my outbound caller ID number and name has been
showing up like this:

2125551212 (in the name field)
2125551212 (in the number field)

I'm wondering why my phone number is now being displayed
in the "name" field. (which used to show either my name,
"unavailable" or just my city/state)

This is very strange.... it shows up the same way on all my friends'
or family's caller ID displays.(including California, Oregon, Ohio, New
Jersey, New York, Texas, and Hawaii)

Any ideas?

Posts: 144 · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject: Caller ID

Vonage does not put your name in the SS7 database used by most carriers to translate your number into a name. If you ported a number to Vonage, it may still be in the database for a while if the previous carrier put it there, but eventually, it seems to go away.

Posts: 627 · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:39 pm Post subject:

Vonage does not populate the customers name in their carriers and CNAM providers database. This means when your number is passed through SS7, the receiving carrier dips into their CNAM databse and is unable to reference a name for the calling number.

Industry standard for numbers that do not have names in a CNAM database is for the receiving carrier to post something for name. In most cases, the receiving carrier will use Unavailable, Unknown, or the City/State of the rate center / market the calling number is from. All of these are acceptable. It may also replace the name if no name is passed with the phone number which is why it displays on both lines of the CID display.

When Bell, Verizon, ATT, etc... were the only choice, there were less CNAM issues. Now that there is choice, anytime you switch from one provider to another, does not matter VoIP or not, chances are there will be some differences in the way both Inbound and Outbound CID displays due to the use of different CNAM databse providers. Some providers will even cache CNAM so it may not have the most up to date records.