A fairly recent development in the business telecom world, here in Canada anyway, involves incorrect Caller ID being shown on certain smart phones.

History of Caller ID in Canada

Caller ID (abbreviated to CLID) has a long history of technical issues because it is inherently a digital service that was “tacked on” to old fashioned analog lines. I remember when CLID first became available in the interior of BC sometime around the 1990’s. It was an incredible novelty to know who was calling before we even picked up the phone! The first few friends who called me after CLID was activated on my POTS line were shocked and awed when I answered the phone with “Hi John/Peter etc.” It seemed to them like I had psychic abilities, lol!

Back in those days CLID data was transmitted as an audio-encoded digital signal that came between the first and second ring on analog lines. For this reason, if you answered your phone too quickly you wouldn’t see the CLID information. The name that was displayed (limited to 15 characters) came from a database called LIDB and was presumably updated by the telephone company you ordered your line from. The telco usually took their best guess as to what the 15 characters should be.

 

Caller ID on PRI and SIPCell phone with incoming caller ID

As digital phone lines became more common throughout the year 2000 era, businesses gained the ability to dictate their own CLID that was sent to the carrier along with outgoing calls. PRI type lines typical used NI1 or NI2 protocols to pass the CLID name/number data along with the destination number that had been dialed. VoIP or SIP calls do something similar within the outgoing INVITE packets that are sent. However, it was also common to receive a complaint that the destination party saw the wrong Caller ID name! This was usually due to one of these two reasons:

  1. A saved cell phone contact overwrote the actual name that arrived with the call
  2. The receiving carrier looked for the CLID name in LIDB as opposed to respecting the CLID that was sent with the call

Reason 1 was usually a simple fix – just delete the incorrect contact. Reason 2 was more difficult and sometimes not possible to overcome.

 

Smart Caller ID

Skip ahead to the 2020 era. Smart phones such a Samsung and Apple have started to employ “Smart” CLID for incoming calls. The phone itself sends the incoming back to a cloud service and asks if there is a known Name for the given number. If the cloud service has a name (where it gets this from I have no idea!), the phone will overwrite the actual CLID name with the name from the cloud service. The upside is that it overcomes the 15 character limit, but the downside is that it can often be totally wrong! We’ve personally seen cases where a strangely spelled non-existent business name shows up.

 

How to Fix a Smart CLID Listing

Good news! There is an easy fix if you are experiencing the issue where your business CLID Name shows up incorrectly on certain smart phones. Simply go to the Hiya Website and choose the option to Remove Incorrect Name Shown for a Call.

If you have any further questions about CLID and your business phones feel free to Contact Atcom!