[asterisk-biz] Wireless lookup service

[Nathan Shadle]

So this is a loaded question...
 
The short, yet inaccurate, answer is that I use http://telcodata.us/
 
The longwinded answer goes like this:
With the advent of Number Portability (both Local Number Portability and
Wireless Number Portability), that data changes on a day-to-day basis as
users swap from provider to provider, and other reasons numbers might
shift from one carrier to another. The only true maintainer of which
provider serves a particular number is NANPA (which contracts Neustar to
handle this), which is who the carriers report their changes and ports
to.  Even the major carriers get daily updates to this data, or they
query Neustar themselves. 
 
There are a number of somewhat expensive methods to access this data (I
say expensive to mean it's cost prohibitive for many small businesses).
Most revolve around getting SS7 access (equipment and service) or
getting an account with Neustar directly (which often requires you to be
a carrier yourself). You can pay a number of companies like Verisign or
NetNumber per query (which, just get their data from Neustar). You might
be able to locate a provider who will offer to provide queries for you,
say, through HTTP, but I'm reasonably certain (if I remember correctly
from my Neustar legal documentation) that they expressly forbid this,
and require that the data just be used for routing.
 
So, your best bet might be to use a database like I've mentioned above
with a "best guess" approach. All my research leads me to believe you'll
get somewhere around 95% accuracy, though perhaps more for wireless
because people tend not to port wireless numbers as frequently.
 
Nathan
 

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Al Lougher
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:42 PM
To: asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com
Subject: [asterisk-biz] Wireless lookup service



I'm looking for a service that can provide either a database or method
for looking up a number to determine if it is wireless or not. Doesn't
have to give carrier information (although that would be nice). US only.


Does anyone know of such a service?


Thanks
Alan



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