[Asterisk-Users] Reverse number lookup

Bill Merriam lists at billmerriam.com
Fri Jul 23 14:51:58 MST 2004


Voicepulse Connect provides callerid number, but not name.  If the 
caller isn't already in my database I would like to do a reverse number 
lookup on the net to get a name.  There are several web sites that allow 
you to do exactly that, for free.  To do that from * would require that 
I write scripts to run the web query and get the name off the results 
page.   Some of the sites I looked at have terms of service that don't 
allow you to use scripts.  Presumably they want you to read the ads on 
their web page while you are doing your query.

Google provides reverse number lookup on their web site, and they have 
an XML/SOAP API you can use to do web searches but the API won't do 
phone number lookups.

Some commercial services provide XML/SOAP reverse number lookups.  They 
don't quote prices (if you have to ask, you can't afford it) but expect 
volumes of 5000 or more lookups per month.  My volume would be more like 5.

My local PSTN callerid gives you the city name of the caller if they 
don't know their name.  It is a nice feature.  I could figure out the 
call center, which is more or less the city, from data available from 
the North American Numbering Plan folks.

Does anybody know of a good reverse number lookup solution for 
Asterisk?  Perhaps I should offer to pay VP Connect $1/month more if 
they give me the name and save me a lot of trouble.

Bill



More information about the asterisk-users mailing list