Caller ID Different from Competitor

Posts: 51 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 26, 2008 Posts: 51

With my local telephone company when someone would call it would come up with their name.

For example:
Doe, John
(555)555-5555

So far, with Vonage, it displays what is programmed in the cordless phone system. If it is not programmed in our system, it will have the number and the city and state. Online it also has the number, and the city and state. When a cell phone calls, it says Cell Phone New Jersey, which is fine. With the local phone company it would say Wireless Caller.

Is this working properly or should it have the caller's name?

Posts: 879 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Nov 05, 2005 Posts: 879

Landline calls should should display the callers name and number regardless if the name is or is not programmed into your phone. Cell calls received will display, "Cell Phone + state abbreviation" as the ID along with the number.

Posts: 51 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 26, 2008 Posts: 51

Should I contact Vonage Technical Support?

Posts: 879 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Nov 05, 2005 Posts: 879

Yes, I would.

Posts: 51 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 26, 2008 Posts: 51

Thank you. I will let you know how it goes.

Posts: 51 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 26, 2008 Posts: 51

Well I called them and the representative tried to give me some type of explanation. It didn't make much sense to me, but I thanked him anyway. Does anyone know what is wrong and what can be done to solve this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Posts: 628 · Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 6:35 pm Post subject:

I have explained this many times before in other postings. Now that there is choice among who you can choose as your phone service provider, there is going to be a difference in the display of the CNAM. So if you go from Verizon, SBC, AT&T, etc ... to Vonage or another VoIP provider such as your own cable company, you may experience some differences on what you see on your caller ID display as well as what others may see when you call them.

When you were with and only had the choice of your local phone service provider, you got used to what was in stored in their CNAM database and since this was the only one you have used since caller ID was introduced, it became the norm for you. Humans are creatures of habit and do not like change which is going to have to be accepted if you leave your local phone service provider to go elsewhere.

The reason for the change is because everyone uses a different database to dip into when querying for CNAM. These databases are owned an operated by separate entities therefore are not always in sync and can vary in what they will display. The change from Wireless Caller to City / State is acceptable by industry standards because the value of City and State represents a display of the calling number's origin when the database dipped into does not have name for the number.

The way caller ID works is that the receiving carrier does a dip into a CNAM database. Just like how you would look up a number by name, this does the opposite. When a number does not exist in the database or the number does not have a name, the receiving carrier will populate the name entry with Unknown, Unavailable, City / State, or another acceptable value. These cannot and will not be changed to a name by Vonage's providers. These are also different from Private or Anonymous which have a restricted presentation(number being blocked) in the passing SS7 signaling.

So when a call is placed to a Vonage customer, Vonage will dip into their CNAM providers database and the provider will pass what they have stored. If nothing is in their database, the provider does an external dip into another database to retrieve the data being requested and pass it to Vonage. In some markets, Vonage is not even doing the dip. It is being passed to them from the interconnecting LEC carrier.

There are other issues that may occur as well such as wrong name. Wrong name will happen if there is a stale record in the CNAM databse being queried. The database may have the name of the person who prevously leased that phone number. In this case, it can be corrected by calling Vonage. Vonage would have to open a ticket with their provider who then has to verify the name that is being requested is valid for the number in current time. This could average about 7 days to correct.

Now if you experience a problem with your outbound caller ID not displaying correctly, depending upon what it displays will determine whether or not Vonage has the ability to correct it. For the most part, there should be no names stored for Vonage numbers however, Vonage's number are sold to them in bulk and the provider selling the numbers at one point in time put Vonage Holdings as the name for all the numbers. If this is what displays, Vonage can tell the provider to remove it. But once again, if the receiving carrier has stale records in their database, it wont matter what Vonage's provider changes. It will show wrong name. Mostly the person you call should see Unknown, Unavailable, City / State, or your number for both name and number.

So until the FCC makes a CNAM standard that all CNAM providers must replicate data, there will always be some discrepancies from what you have been accustomed to.

Posts: 51 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 26, 2008 Posts: 51

Thank you for helping me understand this.

I have one more question about the Caller ID. When I call someone, it comes up as UNKNOWN. I asked Vonage about that and he said it is supposed to be like that and he cannot change it.

Is it supposed to say UNKNOWN?

Posts: 628 · Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 7:07 pm Post subject:

Yes. Read the last full paragraph from previous post. It does cover your outbound CNAM display. As I mentioned, it is the receiving carrier that will always dip for the CNAM. Since Vonage does not post or publish names with their numbers, the receiving carrier will either use Unknown, Unavailable, City / State, or your number as the name display. The switch of the receiving carrier is programed with a default display which can be any of the above variables when a name cannot be located for the calling number. The only way for a name to show on a Vonage number is if you port your number to Vonage. (this part has nothing to do with Vonage) Then everyone else's CNAM database will still have a record of your name for your number from the previous provider as long as your previous provider does not have it flushed.

Posts: 51 · Full Forum Member Joined: Oct 26, 2008 Posts: 51

Thank you very much for your replies! I now understand how it works. I didn't know I would learn so much from switching to Vonage!

I only made two topics and have received a response in a timely manner on both. Thank you Vonage-Forum!