On my side of the pond (Germany), caller ID on digital leased lines works flawlessly if the switching gear is digital - post-1980, say - and the service is enabled. As I make my modest living configuring Cisco equipment, I know that the relevant commands are in place for American line types (T1, not E1) as well. But is this a hard-to-get service in the US, like it was over here before the network got completely digitized ?
I find it hard to believe, but stranger things have happened… So, in the name of fighting ignorance - please help me out here.
Yeah, great, I know, pre-view is my friend. I bloody did preview - a fat lot of good that did me, with a stupid typo in the header field. Some friend. Arrrgh!!!
In my defense, I’ll admit that I have no technical experience with the telephone system myself, and everything I posted is based on a second-hand source.
However, since it was brought up in the context of “why do I see UNAVAILABLE when a telemarketer calls me?”, the issue is whether caller ID information is sent on an outgoing call from a digital line.
Philster, when you call out from one of these lines, what shows up on the recipient’s caller ID box?
When you say digital, you could mean a couple things.
A digital T1 with in-band analog signaling. In this case caller ID is difficult to impossible (although I’ve seen non-standard implementation that send a ‘Calling Party Number’ via tones, but it makes call setup mighty slow.) This is a digital emulation of “old” analog trunks.
ISDN line with a seperate out-of-band digital signaling channel, called the D channel. This basically has caller ID built into it, it’s simply a matter of having the end equipment send and use the ID information that would be transmitted in the D-channel.
So to answer your question, Caller ID is very possible if they are using ISDN-type lines. But technically, nothing is forcing the end equipment (for example, the PBX that the telemarketers use) to actually send the caller ID info.
Hey Philster, I spent most of the 90s testing the Siemens Hicom. Hope you didn’t run across too many bugs, but if you did, I rarely tested ACD, so don’t blame me!
Our phones have been ID’d on outgoing calls. For example, my cell phone has caller ID, and when the office is calling, it ID’s them, but not from every extension. I get the “actual” local number assigned as local service. Our phones have direct dial and extensions assigned in the 546-4600-4700 range and 3700 range, but the number that get’s ID’d is 521-4322.
Telemarketers, I suspect, are scrambling the ID going out. As far as I know, that’s easy. I believe in-home applications work as well.
There is an ID that goes out on calls, and I guess if everything from beginning to end is working correctly, then the ID gets carried along, just like any other part of the transmission. Digital or analog, the ID part of the call gets carried.
Just to chime in with everyone else, yes, it all depends entirely on the switch, whether the feature is in use, and whether it’s being blocked.
I work for a small (#wise) telco that serves a huge geographical area. The switches in our two main exchanges are fully functional, with caller id and all sorts of fancy features. The smaller switches in the communities are not all capable of this, though. It’s taking time to replace them, and since there’s only 50 people who make long-distance calls out of the community, we aren’t exactly in a screaming hurry to replace them.
Once Caller ID is turned on at the switch, then it’s blanket. You have to pay extra at our Telco to have Call Display, but preventing your phone from broadcasting its Caller ID is free… just gotta ask. YMMV - I suspect other telcos charge for this. Personally, I think telemarketers should be gouged right out of their profit margin for that service.
It would be terribly naive of anyone to think the administration of the telemarketing company doesn’t know this. They would be blocking that information on purpose, so you can’t avoid them.
That’s what brought this up in the first place… I contend that for every person who looks at the ID box and says “I don’t recognize ‘CCI’, I won’t pick up the phone”, there’s at least one other person who would look at the box and say “unavailable? must be a telemarketer, I won’t pick up the phone,” or would have ID-less calls blocked automatically.
Perhaps this line of discussion is more appropriate for the GD thread.
Actually, ID is on every call, and can be screened out if the sender chooses. It is carried like any other part of the call, and I believe it is before the ring prompt.
There are ways to lose the ID or filter it.
If you have caller ID, sometimes a legit caller will call from even a home number and it will show as “unavailable” or something to that extent. It’s data, and it can be lost or even filtered.
Caller ID blockers just don’t carry the front part of the call, where the ID goes out. Can someone validate that for me?
I believe mixing digital and analog increases the likelihood that data is lost, and that could be the ID.
…but I run an outbound call center. We bought what the local telco calls “SuperTrunks;” essentially they are T1’s, but, to keep cost down, many features are unavailable. One of those features is the ID that lets Caller ID boxes see who we are.
We are technically unable to be ID’d, just as Mr. 2001 claims to be. It sucks, too, because people love to talk to us. We would do much better if we could pass ID.
It sucks, too, because people love to talk to us. We would do much better if we could pass ID.