Most local phone companies want to, or soon will, offer Caller Name Delivery. The service is tied to the Caller ID service provided in almost all areas of the United States. Other nations have not yet begun to deploy Caller ID or Name services.
Some areas of the U.S. are not offering the service because of legal actions for privacy. However, in the areas that do offer the service it may be part of a basic package that includes other services, such as automatic callback or trace services. Other phone companies may sell the service as a stand alone. In either case Customer Provided Equipment (CPE) is required for the service to function properly. The CPE can be punched from any number of electronic stores or discount houses that deal in telephone items. The cost of the device can range form around $35.00 to several hundred dollars, depending on how sophisicated one wishes to get.
The service operates in the following manner:
A caller picks up the telephone handset to place a call. The switching
center that provides the dial tone for this call activates the
collection of the telephone number making the call. This is known
as Automatic Number Identification (ANI). When the caller dials
a number the ANI is transmitted to the telephone switching center
[known as a central office (CO)] where the number dialed is located.
When the distant CO accepts the incoming call for a subscriber
of Caller ID/Name service. A query message containing the ANI
of the calling phone is sent to a remote database to retrieve
the name associated with that number. The remote database server
sends a response message back to the CO that contains information
about that ANI.
When the called telephone begins to ring the CO places the Caller ID/Name information on the line connected to the called number. The CPE device reads the encoded information and displays it according to its design. This occurs during the silent period between the first and second ring of the telephone.
There are some problems with this arrangement, as you know if you have Caller ID/Name in your home. Most cellular phone companies do not send the ANI data on calls from the mobile to land based systems. Therefore, the CPE displays "Not Available" or "Out of Area" or something like that. In addition telephone companies that border each other in metropolitan areas do not always have access to the other phone companies' names, so we get the number but not the name. This is due to regulations, the lack of agreements, the cost of equipment and many other factors. It is also possible the caller may have simply stopped the action by invoking the #67 feature that blocks the sending of the data to the called CPE.
TCII can provide a cost effective solution for the small to medium
phone companies that can provide Caller Name Delivery with national
white pages, name lookup at a reasonable price.