Solving the Caller ID Problem - O'Reilly Emerging Telephony

"In the wake of the proposed Truth in Caller ID Act, a lengthy discussion of the issues around reliable Caller ID data recently took place on the excellent Voice Over IP Security Alliance VOIPSEC mailing list. While many points were debated, two things are clear: VoIP-based systems connecting to the PSTN have increased the unreliability of Caller ID data, and law enforcement agencies have legitimate needs to be able to get access to call record information that is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. "

Solving the Caller ID Problem - O'Reilly Emerging Telephony:

A Proposal for Solving the Caller ID Problem

"There is growing concern over the interaction of VoIP systems with the legacy PSTN, and the transmission of caller identity data--most notably, Caller ID on the PSTN. It is not always possible, or obvious how, to handle Caller ID data when moving to or from VoIP and the PSTN networks. There are even business models predicated on the ability of Caller ID to be transmitted to the PSTN with a value that is not 'expected'; call centers are an obvious example, where customer-support staff make outbound calls with a Caller ID that may be from one of many possible clients. More troubling is the possibility that Caller ID may be used to trick unsuspecting call recipients into certain actions or beliefs, and it is this concern that's currently creating a legislative threat I believe must be averted."

O'Reilly Network -- A Proposal for Solving the Caller ID Problem

What Your Phone Company Doesn’t Want You to Know About Caller ID

Sept 27, 2006
What Your Phone Company Doesn’t Want You to Know About Caller ID
By Greg Smith

Every day, millions of Americans are paying for a specific service, and yet they are completely unaware that they are not getting the most for their dollar.
Customers that subscribe to caller ID services pay anywhere from $6.75 per month up to $9.95 per month, but a number of calls listed as "unavailable," "unknown" or "out of area" continue to appear in the caller ID display. While some calls are genuinely blocked or listed as private, these unavailable and out-of-area calls are simply the result of a phone company not spending the money to gather this data.
A small test of caller ID accuracy conducted by The Boston Globe in conjunction with Accudata Technologies Inc. found several instances where two prominent providers in the New England area didn’t supply a caller’s name because they did not want to pay the extra money to obtain the data from the Line Information Database (LIDB)/Calling Name (CNAM) Database where the data is stored – in some cases these databases are combined.
CNAM/LIDBs house most of the working telephone landlines in North America and contain information ranging from service and operational information to customers’ names, their payment history indicator and their preferred language. This data is vital to the normal operation of the phone line. Telephone service providers need this information not only to display names on caller ID, but also to make credit decisions, ensure appropriate billing and other necessary services that callers take for granted. And with fewer than 20 CNAM databases in North America, including one owned and maintained by Accudata, carriers don’t have to search very far to get this information.
In The Boston Globe test, conducted by reporter Bruce Mohl, five calls were monitored on two telephones in Massachusetts belonging to customers who subscribed to different, large telecom companies. Each of the five calls came from out of state; two from Texas and one each from Missouri, New York and Washington. Of the five calls, the first provider was able to identify and properly deliver the calling name for only two. The other service provider registered an even less favorable score, identifying only one of the calls. Research showed that the names were available to both telecom companies; they just chose not to retrieve the data.
Caller ID works by matching the phone number of the person calling with a name obtained from a CNAM database. For the larger providers, caller ID information is typically easier to retrieve in their service areas since it is likely that the caller is one of the carrier’s own customers and therefore the information is located in the provider’s own database. However, if a caller is calling from outside the provider’s service area, or if he or she subscribes to a different provider, the firm then has to purchase information from the caller’s phone company. For example: Larry and Gail both subscribe to AT&T.
If Larry calls Gail, AT&T has only to dip into its own database to provide Gail with Larry’s name and phone number. However, if Angie – who subscribes to Verizon – calls Gail, then AT&T must pay Verizon to gather Angie’s caller information.
The cost of this information is typically less than a penny, but many telecom companies don’t give their customers what they paid for because they choose not to purchase data from other telecom companies. So why aren’t telecoms providing true caller ID services for their customers? Follow the money. Assume that the average telephone receives 200 calls a month, and 100 of those calls come from within the network. In this case, a phone company would need only to identify 100 phone calls from other databases. At a premium rate of one penny for each call, providers would spend $1 each month per customer. If the customer pays $7 per month for caller ID services, the provider receives a 600 percent profit. And while the pennies can add up to millions of dollars, how many other services have this kind of profit margin?
Another big reason for failing to provide true caller ID services is that phone companies don’t want to give money, even the pennies per call it costs for calling name information, to their competition. But perhaps the greatest reason is the lack of knowledge by the customers. Most caller ID users don’t know why "unavailable" shows up on their caller ID displays, and since most calls typically come from within the calling area anyway, unknown numbers are pretty unusual. The biggest exception is cellular calls that still do not always have the name stored in an accessible database.
This doesn’t change the fact that caller ID customers are still paying anywhere from $80 to more than $100 per year for a service that is not living up to expectations. Consumers do not typically put up with this type of service; they squeeze every last mile out of their gas tanks, every last gigabyte out of their iPods or every last bit of speed out of their modems. Consumers would complain if the call forwarding feature that they purchased only worked 80 percent of the time, or if it only functioned if it was forwarded to a number provided by the same carrier. People want the most for their money, but if they want the most out of their caller ID, they’re going to have to do something about it, whether by lodging a complaint with the FCC or to their local state public utility commission. Otherwise, phone companies will continue to provide this incomplete service to unsuspecting consumers. Consumer complacency is the phone company’s friend.

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WPRI Channel 12 - Providence, Rhode Island

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Caution: Unidentified callers ahead

Caution: Unidentified callers ahead
Phone companies fail to provide some IDs because of the cost of obtaining the data
By Bruce Mohl
July 9, 2006

Some callers can’t be identifi ed because their information is blocked or unavailable, but in other
cases the callers aren’t named because the customer’s phone company simply doesn’t want to spend the money to obtain the data.
A small Globe test of caller ID accuracy found several instances where Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. didn’t provide a caller’s name because they didn’t want to pay the extra money.
The price is minimal on a per-call basis -- often a penny or less a call -- but spread across a telecommunications giant’s many customers, it can quickly run into the tens of millions of dollars.
A spokesman for Verizon said the company provides excellent caller ID service, culling names from its own vast database and also spending tens of millions of dollars each year to access additional names from other telecommunications companies.
``We do not buy data from some smaller companies because the cost to do so doesn’t justify the
relatively little data that we don’t already have,” said Verizon spokesman Philip G. Santoro . ``We’re giving customers as much as anyone could give them without making it cost prohibitive for us.”
Comcast spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman said the cable giant contracts with a national database
company for its caller ID services. She said it was her understanding that the company buys name data from most telecommunications companies.
Caller ID is a hugely popular service, allowing consumers to see the name and number of who is calling so they can decide whether to take the call or return it later.
In Massachusetts, 65 percent of Verizon’s 1.7 million landline customers have caller ID. Four of every five customers with caller ID have it as part of a bundle of telecommunications services. The a la carte price is $7.95 a month, and is scheduled to rise to $8.20 a month on Saturday .
Comcast charges $6.75 a month on an a la carte basis, but a spokeswoman said most customers
receive it as part of a bundled package.
Caller ID works by matching a number with a name. For a company like Verizon, caller ID information is easy and inexpensive to retrieve in its own service area because the caller is probably one of the firm’s own customers. But identifying the name of someone calling from outside the company’s service area requires the firm to purchase that information from the caller’s phone company.
On its website, Verizon explains that the caller ID service will not always generate the name and number of the caller. When that happens, the website says, a message will be displayed explaining why.
The messages vary depending on the customer’s display unit, but Verizon identifi ed ``out of area” or ``unavailable” as messages that would pop up for calls made from outside ``specially equipped areas” and calls made through an operator. The messages ``private” or ``anonymous” would appear for calls made by people who have blocked the display of their telephone information. Industry officials says it’s also diffi cult to identify the names of people making calls using operators, toll-free numbers, or from businesses with their own phone systems. Names are also not available for consumers with dial-around long-distance service or customers of telecommunications companies that don’t store name data, including many wireless carriers.
M. Gregory Smith , chief executive of Accudata Technologies of Allen, Texas, a company that aggregates and sells data attached to phone numbers, said many telecommunications companies shortchange their caller ID customers by failing to purchase name data from smaller telecom companies. He said Verizon is one of the worst offenders.
``They don’t want to pay the going price,” Smith said.
Santoro of Verizon indicated Accudata charges too much for the calling name data it has for a number of smaller telecom companies. ``We don’t think this guy’s data is worth the money,” Santoro said. He declined to discuss the two companies’ pricing.
Smith said his prices are more reasonable than Verizon’s. He said Verizon charges 1.6 cents for each calling name Accudata purchases, but Accudata would be willing to charge Verizon half that . Smith said Accudata spends more than $1 million a year purchasing data from Verizon.
To test whether caller ID customers are getting their money’s worth, the Globe arranged for five people to call numbers here in Massachusetts belonging to a Verizon and a Comcast customer with caller ID. All of the calls came from out of state, one each from New York, Missouri, and Washington, and two from Texas.
The Verizon customer’s caller ID was able to identify only the caller from New York, who presumably was in Verizon’s database. For the other four calls, only the state the call was coming from was identified.
The Comcast caller ID correctly identifi ed the callers from New York and Missouri and listed the other three as ``unknown name.”
Verizon and Comcast said they couldn’t provide names for the two Texas numbers because they were in Accudata’s database, and neither company purchases data from Accudata. Verizon didn’t come up with the Missouri name because it doesn’t purchase name data from Southwestern Bell Co., which is now part of AT&T. Comcast’s caller ID provider did purchase the Southwestern Bell name and the Verizon name.
The fifth caller from Washington wasn’t identifi ed by either company, presumably because he is living in a furnished apartment where phone service is supplied by the landlord.
Santoro of Verizon said the Globe’s small sample was not statistically valid, and added that Verizon would have done much better in a larger test involving name data from larger telecom companies.
Santoro said Verizon customers are very satisfi ed with the company’s caller ID service. ``We haven’t had one call about this from the millions of customers we serve,” Santoro said.
But complaint calls may not be a good barometer of caller ID service quality, since it’s nearly impossible to know when a caller’s name is unavailable for a legitimate reason and when it’s unavailable because the company is trying to cut costs and increase its profits.

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