I have set up an Obi 100 using Google Voice, plus I have set up an additional incoming phone number with Callcentric.com for the purpose of being able to have 911 service and caller ID. Everything is working well except I have a hit and miss problem with Callcentric's caller ID - it only shows the NAME about half the time. I submitted a ticket to Callcentric and submitted my Obi configuration screenshots to them, but so far they have not been able to diagnose the problem. Furthermore, they say that I am only paying $1.50 for 911 service and they make no guarantees that the caller ID service will come across with their "free" phone number. Is anyone else using Google Voice and Callcentric with the Obi having issues with caller ID such as this and do you know if there is a setting in the Obi that could be tweaked to help alleviate the problem? Thank you, Jerry in Michigan / BearJerCares@gmail.com
I've had callcentric and Obi and google voice for more than a year.
But I just recently started using my free callcentric DID as the target phone for my google voice in coming calls.
I did this exactly so I would get CallerId and NAME.
So far it pretty much works as expected.
As with the other phone companies, Callerid/Name is not 100%.
More like 95% for numbers and 50-90% for names DEPENDING who is calling you from what kind of service.
With more than 1/2 my calls coming from cell phones, the best you get when receiving a cell phone call is
"Cell Phone - <name of state>"
I wonder why, since most cell phones are post-paid phone registered to a particular name, why don't the cell companies cooperate with caller-name? But they don't.
BUT there is a cool Callcentric feature - you can put names and phone numbers into an online "phone book" associated with your Callcentric account - then whenever an inbound caller-id NUMBER "hits" on your personal phone book, Callcentric over-rides the calling name provided by the other phone company and instead, of course, send the name you specified in your personal callcentric phone book.
There is a way to import/export phone books as simple spreadsheets...
And/Or you can can review your incoming calls on callcentric "report" and work with that...
I rarely get incoming calls at home but wife gets them frequently and today she told me that calls have been coming up as Private for the last 1 and 1-/2 week. I checked on my CallCentric Dashboard and found that calls showing up as private are showing as Anonymous on call centric's system. I suspected a problem with Google Voice so I switched voice to route to my secondary VOIP provider Anveo. Calls through Aveo properly showed numbers and would give names as well. Switched back to Callcentric and still having the problem.
I opened a ticket with Callcentric to see if they can figure out what is going on. I'll report back what I find, for now I'll switch to having Anveo handle calls for a while.
MikeHObi, I am having the exact same problem you described. My CallCentric call log started showing all calls as anonymous around noon eastern time on Friday, Sept 27th. It's been two days now. Please keep us posted on what CallCentric says when they resolve or close your ticket.
Here is the results of the ticket and talking.
Problem is not CallCentric and is Google. Calling my GV number forwarded to the Free NY DID from my Cell phone I get Anonymous on the call log at CallCentric. Calling my Free NY DID number directly from my cell phone I get CNAME and CNumber from the phone book entry I have at Callcentric.
Call Centric verified this information in their reply to the trouble ticket, if they get nothing on the incomming that what gets sent out.
For now I'm routing GV through Anveo as I get CNAME through that as well. I'm going to figure out how to tell Google they have a problem with their 914-662 numbers not getting the calling number reliably.
Note, it has been somewhat random in that everyonce and a while CNUmber would get through. But more often than not it didn't.
I'm pleased to report that the caller ID issue is resolved. It started working again. I temporarily switched to having the Obi100 receive my Google Voice calls directly through Google Chat, which provided number-only caller ID. I then switched back to forwarding my Google Voice calls to CallCentric, and the caller ID is once again working. Google must have resolved the issue on their end.
Let's hope it stays working.
I have also been getting the problem of callcentric showing Anonymous, while on the GV call log it shows the correct number. The occurrence is random, sometimes the same number will show on callcentric while some other time it'll appear as anonymous.
I have also been having this exact problem off and on.
First time was from about Sept 23 - Sept 26. It started happening again on Oct 9 and is still happening as of Oct 13.
My setup: obi 110
SP1: GoogleVoice for free outbound
SP2: Callcentric free NY DID number for outbound 911 and designated as inbound destination number for GoogleVoice. Inbound calls made to my GV number are directed to SP2's Callcentric NY DID number, where a match is made to my Callcentric directory and the Caller ID name field for that call shows my customized listing.... this has been an absolutely perfect setup.. very low cost and reliable..... until about a month ago.
Suddenly inbound calls were listed in the GV call log correctly and showing Caller ID, but when those calls reached Callcentric, the Caller ID number had been stripped off, leaving "anonymous" in its place.
In my limited testing, the problem was with calls made FROM Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile cell phones... this anomaly happened over and over when tested from either of these cellphone providers. In addition, when these 2 cellphones (one from VZW, one from T-Mobile), were set to ring as destination numbers in GV, and calls were placed to the GV number from a third (VZW) cellphone, both the VZW and T-Mobile cellphones received the Caller ID from GV while Callcentric did not (and showed anonymous).
I do not have access to any AT&T or Sprint cellphones to test.
I did not submit a support ticket to Callcentric since there are so many providers in this equation.... all VZW or T-Mobile calls made directly to my Callcentric NY DID showed perfect Caller ID, but those same calls routed through GV showed anonymous, both in the Uniden home phone Caller ID display, and in the Callcentric call log on the Dashboard page
Have any of you guys (or gals) had anonymous calls show up from GV to Callcentric that were made from a different provider than Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile
For now, I have inbound calls ringing on SP1 using GoogleChat, which shows number only, of course.
Thanks for any ideas or help to get this solved.
Additional testing info:
I just used the GV "web-trigger" callback option where you can type in the number you want GV to call when signed into your GV account on the computer and have it call you back on one of your verified phones....
When my Callcentric NY DID was chosen as the number for GV to call me back on to setup the outbound call..... the calls came in as "anonymous".... these calls did not involve any other GV destination phones since the dropdown box is specific to have GV call back on the one number that is chosen..
Again, thanks for any help or ideas
It seems to me that the problem occurs regardless of the source. I have had calls with this problem from both landlines and cell phones.
@VOIPisGreat... Thanks for your reply. Is your CallCentric number one of the Free NY DID's or a paid CallCentric DID?
AFAIK, the free NY DID's use CallCentric's in-house CLEC, Telengy. The paid DID's use other CLECS which may be much larger providers that have USA and international coverage.
As an experiment to change up the equation, I signed up for and added one of CallCentric's "Dirt-Cheap" DID's for $2.95/mo. It uses XO Communications as it's CLEC instead of Telengy. I verified it with GV and am now using the Dirt Cheap DID as the GV destination number. It still rings into my obi 110 on SP2 since it is on the same CC account. So far, every inbound call made to the GV forwarded to the new DID has shown the proper Caller ID. I will monitor this to see if that fixes the problem or not....
Thanks for any help or other ideas
I have the free NY DID.
Please keep us posted if the paid account resolve your issue. Thank you.
Ongoing followup:
2 days ago, Oct 14, I added a CallCentric "Dirt-Cheap" DID for $2.95/mo to my CallCentric account.
I had been using a Free NY DID as the GV destination number prior to this, but have experienced many incoming calls in the last month with "anonymous" Caller ID sent from GV to the Free NY DID number.
Adding the Dirt-Cheap CallCentric DID had the effect of changing the CLEC from Telengy (NY DID) to XO Communications (for the DirtCheap DID that I was assigned).
I just conducted another very limited experiment.
I made a total of 4 test calls from a Verizon Wireless cellphone.
I toggled back and forth in the GV settings between sending the calls to the Free NY DID or the DirtCheap DID
Each of the calls sent to the Free NY DID (Telengy CLEC) showed the proper Caller ID in the GoogleVoice Call Logs, but showed "anonymous" in the CallCentric Call Logs and in the Caller ID display of the Uniden corded phone.
Each of the calls sent to the DirtCheap DID (XO Communications) showed the proper Caller ID in the GoogleVoice Call Logs, and also showed the proper Caller ID (including the matched name in my CallCentric personal directory).
I also noticed that the DirtCheap DID calls rang immediately on the Uniden corded phone, but there was a 1-2 ring delay before the Uniden phone started ringing on calls from GV forwarded to the Free NY DID.
I am keeping the DirtCheap DID number for now.
I really like a reliable, low-priced solution. Sometimes the aggravation of time spent troubleshooting a Free service can get to be too much.
I have not put in any trouble tickets for this at CallCentric, as I am not sure if they have any control over the missing Caller ID on calls forwarded from GV.
I did find a posting in the GoogleVoice support group that I am almost sure reflects the same GV to CallCentric Free NY DID problem (after doing a search for the word "anonymous")
There normally has to be a huge number of identical complaints in the GV forums for someone to identify the problem properly and grab the attention of any sort of tech support that Google may have..... good luck with that....
If anyone notices any other strange behaviors with the Free NY DID's, please let us know here.
I will report back again later if I notice any other issues with these GV to CallCentric DID calls.
Thanks
Thanks for the investigation, please let us know if there's any update.
While I consider caller ID important, I am fine if it works in 90% of all cases. In the world of spoofed DID's I am not going to make myself crazy about this issue or spend extra money on it.
Are you having this issue or not?
By my observation it used to work 100% until recently. Now it's really unreliable, nowhere close to 90% as you quoted.
Quote from: carl on October 17, 2013, 06:43:46 PM
While I consider caller ID important, I am fine if it works in 90% of all cases. In the world of spoofed DID's I am not going to make myself crazy about this issue or spend extra money on it.
It's working now.
Quote from: carl on October 18, 2013, 06:15:00 PM
It's working now.
Good for you, but I'm still having issues.
I'm having the exact same problem. It was working fine up until this weekend. If I call my callcentric line directly then I get proper cname. If I call my GV which then forwards to CC then I get PRIVATE CALLER instead. In my CC logs it shows Anonymous as being received. I have not filed a ticket with CC yet.
Received the following from CC support:
Hello,
We checked the trace logs for one of the calls and noticed the following:
Remote-Party-Id: <sip:########@xxxxxxxx;user=phone>;party=calling;id-type=subscriber;privacy=uri;screen=yes
In particular the "Privacy=uri" portion which indicates that the call is being sent to us anonymous and we should not pass the caller ID information for the call. As per the SIP RFC our servers are then stripping the CID information when sending it to your device. This is beyond our control, Google needs to change or remove the privacy flag in order for the call to be forwarded with caller ID information.
If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us at any time, thank you.
See this similar discussion:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=3640.msg43621#msg43621
If enough people who have paid and free CC DIDs would open tickets and insist that CC look into why their free and paid DIDs handle CID differently, then maybe CC will fix it on their end. Google is going to take a look at it, as of today, but I think it would be more productive if CC figured out what's different on their side.
I would call BS on CC unless they produce a similar log for an inbound call to a paid DID.
Well, google is obviously not setting the privacy attribute nor anything in that logfile.
google is simply calling a DID. That does not pass a privacy attribute. The provider of that DID is doing an analog to digital conversion and creating the metadata trace log record posted by CC. That trace log simply shows that CC needs to look closer to the DID to discover why the privacy attribute has been set.
The only thing google could be doing is NOT passing the CID information to the DID (ala *67). In which case why would CC need to be "stripping the CID information"? There would be nothing to strip.
One interesting thing I see in that line is the "party=calling;id-type=subscriber". That sounds like this record is calling party information, and further that CC is recognizing the calling party as a subscriber. How would CC do that recognition except by receiving the caller id of the calling party? I wonder if GV is passing a CID that CC recognizes as belonging to a subscriber, and CC is then recording that event and prepping for later filtering it out by setting the privacy setting. Do you have GV set to use your GV number or the calling part as the CID? Did you add your GV number to your CC account?
I asked CC to take a look at calls I received with caller ID intact from last week and this is their response. Find it hard to believe but....
We do not have detailed SIP logs for the calls from last week, only from the last couple of days.
If you call your Free Phone Number directly you will see that your caller ID is sent without issue. We are not blocking caller Id's from Google Voice, they are sending us the privacy flag that we have shown you.
If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us at any time, thank you.
Ponder this from DSL Reports today in their forum.
"reply to pagemen
I'm starting to think this is becoming more spread than just GV.
I just tried calling my NY DID using Anveo, and it comes through as anonymous.
I then tried calling my normal DID, and it works fine.
join:2000-03-21
reply to pagemen
I've started to notice this, too.
Calling my Callcentric free NY DID directly from Localphone I get an incoming CID of Anonymous.
Calling my GV# from Localphone (which is forwarded to Callcentric), I also get an incoming CID of Anonymous.
It wasn't always like this.
hey mods · actions · Today 6:38 am ·
tommyanon
@comcast.net
could be that there is a certain route that offers lower pricing that many providers have started using to call the callcentric DIDs and that particular route does not pass caller ID properly. if the callcentric DIDs have a higher than normal termination rate that could explain why several carriers start using the same problem route assuming that route offeres a lower than average termination charge.
it may even be intentional. i seem to remember reading several years ago about carriers stripping caller ID because they were terminating long distance calls as local to get around very high rural termination fees. if i recall this was related to some Iowa based conference calling services."
Quote from: gmercator on October 16, 2013, 10:07:51 PM
If anyone notices any other strange behaviors with the Free NY DID's, please let us know here.
Yeah I'm having one, GV to CC inbound calls to a free DID doesn't work half the time, and rings late the other half:
http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=6922.msg43663#msg43663
Today I got a call thru my GV # which forwards to my CC DID
GV history shows the proper caller ID 203-xxx-xxx, but Callcentric and OBI show New York, NY 917-281-xxxx
The caller received the telemarketer msg press x to continue call, even though the 203-xxx-xxxx is listed in my CC phone book
most of the posts are complaining of the call showing up as anonymous. How is this call showing up with the same area code as my free CC DID? 917-7xx-xxxx
edit, I am also getting some caller ID's that show up as GEOCONNECT LLC 917-281-xxxx
It is probably a carrier generic number. Perhaps supplied by the GV carrier to fake an intra-LATA or intra-State call.
I noticed that when my localphone account calls my IPKall DID I get a generic carrier CID. Localphone cannot call my GV number. But when I use my cell to call my GV number and it forwards to my IPKall DID then I get the proper CID. A few weeks ago those tests all operated correctly and I haven't changed anything.
Are most people who have GV forwarded to a free NY Callcentric number still having problems with the incoming caller ID? I was considering getting a free NY Callcentric number, and forwarding my GV line to it, just to get incoming caller ID with name. I'm reconsidering now, unless the problem has been resolved.
It has not been resolved.
Quote from: Studly on December 18, 2013, 05:13:52 PM
Are most people who have GV forwarded to a free NY Callcentric number still having problems with the incoming caller ID? I was considering getting a free NY Callcentric number, and forwarding my GV line to it, just to get incoming caller ID with name. I'm reconsidering now, unless the problem has been resolved.
Note, this isn't only a Callcentric issue. Anveo also has issues with their cheap DID's. This is really a google issue.
I saw problems a week or two ago with an IPKall DID as well. Before and since then it has been working great.
Are people still having these Caller ID problems?
Yes, they still exist.
I switched to a paid number for CallCentric and I've had no caller ID problems since then. Of course free was better.
Since Jan. 7th, CID forwarded from GV to Callcentric (on free DID) has been accurate for me. YMMV
At this point of time, only problems I have are with calls involving GV. All calls forwarded through Localphone DIS.s- both U.S. and overseas, show proper CLID, so do calls forwarded through TMO or Verizon and so do any direct calls through any half way reputable carrier.. There used to be a problem with Localphone but they fixed it.
There has been a lot of propaganda war against Callcentric for no good reason.
For my part. I am initiating ports from GV for my both DID's before March 15th( most likely to Localphone) and will certainly never look back.
I just set up the free Callcentric DID and have GV forwarding to that. When I call my CC DID directly, it shows proper CNAM. But when I call my GV number, and it forwards to my CC DID, then Caller ID just shows the correct number but says "Out of area."
As long as GV is passing along the callers number, why doesn't CC display the proper CNAM? Is there a setting I need to change or is this the same caller ID problem that others are having?
Quote from: Studly on April 24, 2014, 06:50:03 PM
As long as GV is passing along the callers number, why doesn't CC display the proper CNAM? Is there a setting I need to change or is this the same caller ID problem that others are having?
That has been re chewed over and over. Callcentric shows what Callcentric gets- from Google Voice usually garbage- either no caller ID or fake CLID. It has something to do with the cheap providers GV uses to forward calls to CC's CLEC ( Telengy).
I consider forwarding of Google Voice NOT a good idea and have stopped doing that long time ago.
Quote from: Studly on April 24, 2014, 06:50:03 PM
I just set up the free Callcentric DID and have GV forwarding to that. When I call my CC DID directly, it shows proper CNAM. But when I call my GV number, and it forwards to my CC DID, then Caller ID just shows the correct number but says "Out of area."
As long as GV is passing along the callers number, why doesn't CC display the proper CNAM? Is there a setting I need to change or is this the same caller ID problem that others are having?
I figured out my problem ... I had GV forwarded to Google Chat too, so was getting the call from my GV line direct to the Obi and that's why CNAM wasn't showing. Once I unchecked that option, then GV forwarded properly to CC and the CNAM displayed properly.
Quote from: carl on April 24, 2014, 07:18:19 PM
Quote from: Studly on April 24, 2014, 06:50:03 PM
As long as GV is passing along the callers number, why doesn't CC display the proper CNAM? Is there a setting I need to change or is this the same caller ID problem that others are having?
That has been re chewed over and over. Callcentric shows what Callcentric gets- from Google Voice usually garbage- either no caller ID or fake CLID. It has something to do with the cheap providers GV uses to forward calls to CC's CLEC ( Telengy).
I consider forwarding of Google Voice NOT a good idea and have stopped doing that long time ago.
This issue was resolved several months ago; thus, your comments are no longer applicable.
Seems to be working fine now. I was using a DirtCheap DID, but whilst re-configuring my Obis in preparation for the demise of XMPP, I reinvestigated - and to my delight, I find that Callcentric "free" DIDs now properly receive correct CallerIds from Google voice.
IMO the most economical and powerful solution to XMPP being dropped is
GoogleVoice ==> Callcentric DID for inbound
and LocalPhone.com (with my GV number "spoofed" as the callerid) ==> for outbound
LocalPhone offers outbound calls to the US for prices from $0.001 to $0.005 / minute, depending on your subscription (or not) to a bundle of outbound minutes per month. (I prepay $1.60 for 800 minutes)
For my purposes, this works out even cheaper than the plans OBIhai is promoting.
BTW - callcentric beats LocalPhone for some international outbound calls.
For example calls to Brazil are a little less. So thanks to the very flexible but not so hard to program
digit maps and call handling - I automagically switch to Callcentric for certain prefixes...
I agree with Bob, at least for my purposes. Right now I have Callcentric on both my SPs, because it gives me a unique ring for each number. I want to setup Localphone for outgoing calls, and hope to do that with the Voice Gateway capability of the OBi, once I figure that out. If I can't get it to work that way, then I guess I'll have to either accept the same ring for both incoming Callcentric numbers OR have the less-used one go to voicemail.