Like when someone calls me from a landline i just get their number unless they are added to my phonebook, when back inthe day my caller ID would tell me who or what company was calling me. why do cell phones not have this option? I know their are apps to do reverse look ups but that is after the fact
The simple answer is the cell phone company doesn’t know who’s making the call. Verizon doesn’t know who owns a particular AT&T land line phone number. If you have the number stored, then your cell phone does know who is making the call to you.
IOW, the various companies haven’t yet discovered any financial incentive to share the information with each other. When they do, we may see names. I can’t think of any technological impediment that would prevent “universal” caller ID.
This is a lousy reason.
There’s no reason that the cell phone messaging system couldn’t have added a character string that was settable by the owner. I have yet to hear a good reason why this wasn’t done.
The original Caller ID (as implemented in the US) didn’t provide the name - that came much later.
I had a couple thousand numbers on the second phone switch in the US (the 201-332 1A machine) that offered Caller ID, and prototype Western Electric display boxes. Interesting trivia - the display did show numbers originated from other switch machines if they were in the same LATA. If someone called from a non-SS7 switch or out of the area, the box would display an “unavailable” indication. But if the next call came from the same place, the box would display an “again” message. This is because enough information was available (generally the LEN) to know where a call came from, but not enough to map it back to a usable subscriber number (either WTN or BTN).
You get the number (but not the name) from other areas / carriers because the FCC mandates that this be done without any fees. The FCC also doesn’t require the originating company to do any verification that the number is correct, which is why it is possible to generate fake info when originating a call. It would be easy for a carrier* to restrict customers to only setting numbers that are on their billing account, but since there’s no incentive to do it, they don’t bother.
There is no similar requirement to pass the name free of charge, so the phone companies don’t. This doesn’t explain why related landline and cellular companies don’t pass names, but that’s the way it is.
- Note: technically, this would have to be added to the generic by the switch manufacturer and then the carrier would need to purchase the feature. But the last time I looked (admittedly quite a few years ago) it wasn’t in any WECO/Lucent switch generics (definitely) and didn’t seem to be in the DMS generic (but I didn’t look that hard). Of course, with the lead time needed to get a new feature into a generic…
It is not a good idea to let users specify their owner caller name when they call you. This makes it too easy for a caller to misrepresent themselves. It is much better to let a trusted source provide the information.
Some friends were talking about a paid service that lets you specify the caller name when you call someone – I don’t know the particular details on how this service is implemented. They use it to play pranks on their friends, but it seems like there are many nefarious uses as well.
Fair enough they dont wanna share information but why not share the information they already ahve and just ahve an incomplete feature?
There isn’t much of a demand for it. Since people are much more careful about who they give their cell phone number out to there are ways of doing this.
I am a long time reader of the Straight Dope but today I became a registered user because of threads like this. Let me present my credentials for issues dealing with the telecommunications industry. I have a BS in Computer Science and an MS in Telecommunications Management. I have worked in the telecommunications industry for 28 years. In those 28 years I have worked in the wireline, wireless and ISP sectors of the industry.
Because of this background I always read any threads that pertain to the telecommunications industry and I am appalled at the comments. I thought the General Questions forum was for questions with factual answers. Everytime I read a thread on telecommunications the comments are basically wild-ass guesses and opinions but very rarely are there any factual answers. So, today I registered so I can answer this question factually.
The telecom provider that is serving the calling subscriber provides the calling number to the provider that is serving the called subsriber through the SS7 network that controls the signalling between switches. This is only the calling number. The end office or the switch that is providing the service to the called phone is responsible for providing calling name if the customer has subscribed to that service. Any telecom provider can get the calling name from several available databases that contain calling name information. These databases are not free and each time it is queried (or dipped) a small charge is incurred.
Wireless providers CAN subscribe to one of these databases and pay a per dip charge for each incoming call they just do not. Because cell phones have phone books that can provide the user the calling name on 95% of the calls they receive, it is assumed that not enough wireless subscribers would pay for a calling name service so the wireless carriers have not implemented it.
Welcome Kingfisher!
Welcome to the boards! I hope you continue to contribute.
Related question: I’ve installed apps on my iPhone and other devices to tell me the City, State of an incoming call if the number is not stored in my address book. This is picked up from a simple database of area codes from the local database installed with the app. I find this very useful for numbers that I don’t recognize. Why don’t cellular (or landline) networks offer this service as a caller ID feature?
I’ve seen the state name show up in the name field in the past. I just looked at the last month’s incoming caller ID data and I see a large number of “WIRELESS CALLER”, a couple “UNKNOWN”, several “OUT OF AREA”, and “Cell Phone”, but no state names. I don’t know if Verizon doesn’t do that any more, or I just didn’t have any matching calls.
Part of the reason may be that with the increasing number of VOIP users, the area code and exchange may no longer bear any relationship to where the caller actually is - I had a 212 (New York) area code number in Illinois, for example.
My phone did that for a two week trial period when I first got it and when the two weeks were up I could keep using the service for a monthly fee. I decided against it because I didn’t really need to know the counties my friends were in when they purchased their phones.
Why did landline providers implement it, but not wireless providers? Did the baby Bells just have an agreement to query each others’ databases for free?
Because hardly anyone wants to know where a cellphone number was originally registered and which provider it was originally registered with. Thanks to number portability those databases are now only going to be correct about two thirds of the time, and that fraction will keep dropping.
Verizon will provide this service for $3 a month. I had a free trial of it for a month last time I got a new phone. It was sort of nice but not $3 a month nice.
Interesting, I swear for a time my Alltel cell phone did send along my real name that showed up on landlines’ caller ID.
ETA: I don’t have the phone anymore, switched to a prepaid some time ago, so I can’t try now.
I can verify that Alltel allowed you to put set the name assigned to your phone number on landline caller IDs (but you could only set it once). My sister, who carried over her number to Verizon in the merger still has her name on it, but most people I know don’t. I was always assuming that they just didn’t know how to set it up.
Each of the baby bells had their own databases and if I was guessing they probably had an agreement to swap database information. However, the reason the wireline companies offered the service is because their marketing research showed that customers were willing to pay a monthly service fee to get the service. The wireline customer was willing to pay because (at least at the time) wireline phones didn’t have phone books in them that would display the name. In addition, you receive a lot more calls from people you don’t already know on a wireline phone. Your wireline number is available to everyone through directory listings and solicitors called all the time (before do not call lists). Just as several have shared above, when wireless providers offered the service, no one was willing to pay extra for it. One of the reasons is you usually know the person calling you on a wireless phone because the number is private and no one should know it unless you have given it to them. Of course there are all kinds of exceptions to that stament but I’m talking in generalities here.