Caller ID

Guest

Is anyone else having Caller ID trouble? Sometimes my caller ID works fine and displays the # and name but other times on my phone it just says out of area. I know the friends who are calling my house are not calling by pressing *67 but sometimes it will still say "out of area". Let me know whats going on.

Posts: 106 · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 12:49 am Post subject:

out of area means just that. that it's not available in their database of numbers. that really is strange though as pretty much any us number should be in the database (if not *67 or blocked otheriwse which would show private or blocked) also sometimes people on a trunk or dsn line may not show right either

Posts: 220 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Aug 19, 2003 Posts: 220

We only got Name last week, but already mostly the out of area ones are "junk" calls -- usually recorded ones. We're on the "do not call" list too, so we sure shouldn't be getting them. There are a few legitimate ones coming in that way, though, so it's not to the point we want to just ignore out of area calls.

I do remember when I was on Bell, though, my mom in Florida was always listed as out of area and my national trade association, a very large organization in the DC area did too. I think sometimes in-house phone systems are the cause in that case.

Why you can't see your friends who are local, though, is interesting. We're getting, I'd say, 95% recognition here on legitimate calls.

laureltn

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 08, 2006 Posts: 2

As a NOC technician with another telecommunications company I have found that some of our business customers have frequent caller ID issues when calling Vonage phone numbers.

Here is how caller ID works:
When a person makes a phone call, they (of course) send the number they are calling from as caller ID info. The switching office where the TERMINATING number resides then takes that caller ID number and searches a database to find a name that matches it. Both the name and the number are then delivered to the called (terminating) number when the call is completed. Bottom line: the telco that is RECEIVING a call is responsible for providing the name portion of the caller ID info.

All other carriers that we interface with have their databases up to date; all caller ID name info is displaying correctly for calls to numbers both within our network and outside of it. However, when a Vonage phone receives a call from one of our subscribers, Vonage is apparently still dipping into a database that is out of date and, in many cases, displaying the wrong name to the called party.

When a business changes its name, it is important that all national CNAM (caller ID name) databases are kept up to date. We have updated all the ones that we are responsible for. And all other telecom carriers have updated theirs as well. But Vonage seems to not be doing this.

Vonage only provides one help number. When I call it, I have to navigate through numerous layers of menus! However, there isn't an option that specifically addresses this issue. When I finally do speak to a live body, I am told that the problem is on our end when clearly it is not.

Has anyone else encountered this issue or similar? Were you able to get it resolved? If so, how?

Please respond.

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

I can believe that some of these are probably Vonage's fault, but I don't believe that Vonage is the only pseudo-telecom that doesn't update or maintain theirs. Let's not talk about cell companies and what they screw up in the way of databases. If you're trying to work on the problem, why are you calling regular customer support, and not the engineers directly? I think someone here could probably get you a number for the engineers.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 08, 2006 Posts: 2

Yes! If you have a number I could call and speak to an engineer that would be great.

So far, the regular customer support number is the only one I have. That's the number given to me by my superiors here.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 08, 2006 Posts: 1

I am having a problem my my number showing up on others caller id. I call my friends and they claim my number started showing up as out of the area. Until last week it would be displayed as my number. I called support, they said the number I was calling is in a different regional area. My friends lives about 10 miles away and it was working normal before.

Anyone else have similar issues?