FollowMe Call Display Problem

[jbob]

I just signed up for a new FPL # today, and have it set to forward to my cell.
I tried calling the FPL#, but my cellphone's call display just displays it as "Unknown".
Is this how it works? I thought it was supposed to show the actual name/number if available.
The phone I tried calling from does not block # from displaying.

Thanks!

[FONGO_kris]

Definately not, the caller ID should be preserved throughout your call regardless of whether it's forwarded or not. Could you please email me your Freephoneline number as well as the number that called you (I know this seems ridiculous since it shows up as Unknown, but I would assume you knew who you were talking to).

Thanks!

[brentw]

I have the same problem.
Seemed to start around March 17th for me.
I posted more details in the thread below thinking they wre related problems...
http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=972

[FONGO_kris]

It may be forwarding in general - I'll bring this up tomorrow and test it out.

[yyzyyz]

I too have been experiencing this issue since last week or so... Has something been updated on the server side recently that might be causing this?

[bbgobie]

Yes, I finally got my regular outgoing call display working, but now I noticed forwarding is saying unknown for forwarded calls

[FONGO_steve]

Yes, I finally got my regular outgoing call display working, but now I noticed forwarding is saying unknown for forwarded calls

Forwarding issue is being addressed

[elwebmaster]

Yes, I finally got my regular outgoing call display working, but now I noticed forwarding is saying unknown for forwarded calls

Forwarding issue is being addressed

As you are at it, any chance you could add an option to "show FPL number" instead of the original caller's one?

[yyzyyz]

Some interesting findings...

Initially I thought this problem is related to follow-me because of which, the calls forwarded from FPL to my cellphone (Fido/iPhone) are not displaying CallerID/CallerName. However, I realized recently that my wife, who has similar follow-me settings (FPL forwarded to her Nokia cellphone), is having no issues displaying caller info for calls forwarded from FPL.

So I tried out bunch of different things including swapping the follow-me numbers in our FPL accounts, swapping the SIM cards in our phones, etc. Now I've come to the conclusion that this issue is not related to Follow-me at all and seems to be affecting only iPhones (and maybe certain other devices). All other phones - cellphones or landline are showing caller info without any problem. Even direct calls from FPL numbers are showing up as "Unknown" on iPhones (I tried my friend's iPhone too, to make sure it's not just my device).

This was working perfectly fine a couple of weeks ago... It looks like some updates have been applied to the FPL servers recently that change the handling of CallerID somewhat, which is causing this functionality to break on the iPhones. Can someone from FPL please confirm if there were recent changes related to CallerID? Also, can other iPhone owners please test and report?

[brentw]

I just tested myself and found the same thing.
I have an iphone 3g with rogers, nothing has changed on the iphone in the past few months I'm still on 3.0.1

I tried calling a rogers home phone and my caller id showed up properly.
I tried calling my iphone 7 times in a row and every time it was "unknown".
I have been testing the past few days as well and it used to be every 4th or 5th call it would show the caller id on my iphone, but now it doesn't seem to ever show it.

I would say if something on FPL's end changed in the past week or two to start looking there.
It seems like it was something that gradually migrated over since it used to work every few calls but now it doesn't work at all.

Probably 3 or so weeks ago it was working flawlessly, everytime I called my iphone it showed the caller id.
And the follow-me calls always showed the original callers id.


Update: I just tested calling a friend's new iphone 3gs also on rogers and the same result.

[jbob]

Nice! Great work figuring that out.
Hopefully this helps the peeps at FPL narrow the cause of the problem!

[FONGO_steve]

I just tested myself and found the same thing.
I have an iphone 3g with rogers, nothing has changed on the iphone in the past few months I'm still on 3.0.1

I tried calling a rogers home phone and my caller id showed up properly.
I tried calling my iphone 7 times in a row and every time it was "unknown".
I have been testing the past few days as well and it used to be every 4th or 5th call it would show the caller id on my iphone, but now it doesn't seem to ever show it.

I would say if something on FPL's end changed in the past week or two to start looking there.
It seems like it was something that gradually migrated over since it used to work every few calls but now it doesn't work at all.

Probably 3 or so weeks ago it was working flawlessly, everytime I called my iphone it showed the caller id.
And the follow-me calls always showed the original callers id.


Update: I just tested calling a friend's new iphone 3gs also on rogers and the same result.

by calling the rogers home phone and having it work, then calling the rogers cell phone and having it not work, your test results are showing this is a problem at Rogers' end and not ours - as our systems, like I've said in a few other posts here tonight - are sending out caller ID just fine. It seems to be the Rogers cell phone network - in certain geographical regions - that aren't showing this info.

I'm trying to gather as much info as I can as to where this is happening, but as I also said in my last post, we are powerless to Rogers because only their subscribers can call to report problems!

[yyzyyz]

by calling the rogers home phone and having it work, then calling the rogers cell phone and having it not work, your test results are showing this is a problem at Rogers' end and not ours - as our systems, like I've said in a few other posts here tonight - are sending out caller ID just fine. It seems to be the Rogers cell phone network - in certain geographical regions - that aren't showing this info.

I'm trying to gather as much info as I can as to where this is happening, but as I also said in my last post, we are powerless to Rogers because only their subscribers can call to report problems!

I have no doubt that the FPL systems are sending out CallerID or else it won't display on any device. Yet, the fact that our iPhones suddenly stopped displaying this CallerID tells me that something must have changed in the way these devices receive caller information.

Now, I'm more inclined to believe (and I might be wrong here) that this is something related to recent changes at FPL rather than Rogers for the following reasons: Firstly, the problem is only encountered on iPhones when calls originate from FPL. All other calls display caller info just fine. Secondly, the moment I switch my Fido/Rogers SIM from iPhone to a different mobile device, FPL CallerID magically starts working again. Lastly, I have noticed other changes in CallerID behavior for FPL calls over the last couple of weeks, which are completely unrelated to Fido/Rogers or iPhone.

Are you able to confirm if any updates (particularly CallerID related) have been applied to FPL servers recently (last 2-3 weeks)? It just might be possible that this change inadvertently altered the CallerID record in a way that voilates the boundary conditions on the iPhone, which is why it's discarding it...

Can someone test this with Bell/Telus iPhone and report if the same problem exists?

[FONGO_steve]

What other changes have you seen with caller-ID recently?

Caller-ID is a simple thing, it's a single line of code that goes out to the carrier. I can compare a CID from a call today, with one from a call months ago, and nothing has changed. Stuff like that is standard amongst carriers.
The only thing that may impact it is if an ATA is blocking the CID, or improperly blocking in - I would be able to see both of these in a log though.

[zombie999]

What other changes have you seen with caller-ID recently?

The one change I noticed is that, till about a week or two ago we were able to send custom caller ID. Even though this was never a feature but it worked. Now it no longer works. It always shows FPL number or no number at all, so this was obviously changed recently.

[kevingamble]

Yes, I finally got my regular outgoing call display working, but now I noticed forwarding is saying unknown for forwarded calls

Forwarding issue is being addressed

As you are at it, any chance you could add an option to "show FPL number" instead of the original caller's one?

Another vote for this one..... would be an absolutely perfect feature to compliment the service

[yyzyyz]

What other changes have you seen with caller-ID recently?

The one change I noticed is that, till about a week or two ago we were able to send custom caller ID. Even though this was never a feature but it worked. Now it no longer works. It always shows FPL number or no number at all, so this was obviously changed recently.

This is exactly what I was referring to - a pretty useful feature especially in PBX setups.

Caller-ID is a simple thing, it's a single line of code that goes out to the carrier. I can compare a CID from a call today, with one from a call months ago, and nothing has changed. Stuff like that is standard amongst carriers.
The only thing that may impact it is if an ATA is blocking the CID, or improperly blocking in - I would be able to see both of these in a log though.

Well, it could even be something completely unrelated to caller id. You fix something and something else breaks - it happens all the time. And I don't mean to imply that something is broken on FPL side - for all I know, you just might have uncovered a bug in iPhoneOS with your changes.

That's the reason I was trying to get you to confirm if the FPL systems have been updated recently. If not, we can pretty much rule out this possibility and blame it entirely on Rogers or Apple or whoever.

[zombie999]

What other changes have you seen with caller-ID recently?

Oh yeah....the other thing I noticed is that my FPL caller id used to show like this:
416477XXXX
but since recently it shows like this:
+1416477XXXX

I know for a fact that if your caller id shows as +1XXXXXXXXXXX rogers will not recognize it (if it's your favourite number, you will be billed for the call).

Just placed 2 calls, one to rogers cell phone (not iphone) - no caller ID at all. The other one to Telus cell phone, caller id shows fine. Also forwarded call shows no caller id on rogers. Obviously rogers is either messing something up (what's new!) or it just does not like the new format of the caller ID FPL is sending.

[FONGO_steve]

I can confirm that we have made no updates lately, let alone any that would affect this.
As mentioned earlier, our SIP logs show it sending out perfectly, just as before. No issue on our direct end here, but of course we'll poke around and see where the issue does fall, but can never guarentee we'll have the power to get it fixed if it's a third-party carrier!

[zombie999]

Thanks for the update Steve.

Just did some more testing:

FPL>rogers = no caller ID at all
FPL>telus = caller ID shows FPL ANI (not caller ID set in the trunk)
FPL> FPL = correct caller ID (not ANI)
FPL>MCI toll free ANI and Caller ID verification numbers show FPL ANI as caller ID (not caller Id set in the trunk)

Hope it helps pinpoint the issue.

[brentw]

Just reading another post about this same issue, see below.
Adam seems to be saying the same things, that certain smart phones (iPhone included) can't display the caller ID if the format is slightly off.

Similar to what zombie999 says above with the +1 in front of the number screwing up the passing of the caller id to Rogers cell phones.

Brent

http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=972

[quote="axu"]I met the similar issue start from Mar 16, my cell phone is Fido, and I use mine Dopod CHT 9000 , windows Mobile 6.0 OS.
I using the call to my fpl number which will 'always forward' to my fido cell phone. before Mar 16, it's good ( from Oct 2009 ) and I put my fido sim card to my another cell phone which is Nokia 6101, ( not smart phone ) and the call display is good !

I am the VoIP guy myself, and I was tested which my Asterisk server and some E1 in China, if there are a special char or space before the phone number which send out to the mobile provider like fido, my cell phone won't display the caller ID .

eg. if the caller 416-123-5678 call my fpl number and my fpl number setting in followme is always forwarding to my fido number eg. 416-987-6543.
if fpl program send ' 416-123-5678' or '@416-123-5678' instead of '416-123-5678' my CHT 9000 win mobile 6.0 cell phone won't display the right caller ID like 416-123-5678 and the result is display the unknown number. however, if you send the ' 416-123-5678' to the non smart phone, the call display is good. as my case.

So I doubt the problem is the caller ID which send by the problem of FPL have some special char or space before the caller ID.

Hopefully can help.
Best regards,
Adam.

[brentw]

A further follow-up.

Caller-id to my rogers iphone used to work.
Then it started only working about 1 out of every 6 calls, this lasted for a few days.
Now it doesn't work at all - I just tried 26 times and it didn't work a single time.

To me that looks like maybe migrating over to using different outgoing sip lines or something.
And the new sip lines don't pass the cid info through properly / the same as the old lines did.

I find this very frustrating.
Most of my friends won't answer calls that show up as "unknown".
I do the same, since the majority of the time it is a telemarketer.

So outgoing calls to the majority of my friends is now useless on FPL.

Even if Rogers did change something on their end, it still works for other providers.
So maybe FPL should look at changing how CID is sent from their end (or how it is passed through the new sip trunks if that is what happened) so it will work again (yes even though FPL hasn't actually changed anything to cause it to stop working, they could change it to make it work).

Brent

[yyzyyz]

I find this very frustrating.
Most of my friends won't answer calls that show up as "unknown".
I do the same, since the majority of the time it is a telemarketer.

So outgoing calls to the majority of my friends is now useless on FPL.

I completely agree. This issue is more serious than it seems and is affecting a large number of users.

Even if Rogers did change something on their end, it still works for other providers.
So maybe FPL should look at changing how CID is sent from their end (or how it is passed through the new sip trunks if that is what happened) so it will work again (yes even though FPL hasn't actually changed anything to cause it to stop working, they could change it to make it work).

I doubt anything has changed on the Rogers side that's causing this. Can someone test this with Bell/Telus iPhones and confirm if they are affected too?
In fact, Steve has acknowledged in another thread (http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1058) that FPL has recently made certain other caller-id related changes and its timing coincides very well with the time this problem surfaced. It does seem that the two are related - maybe try rolling back that change to see if it fixes this issue.

[FONGO_steve]

Steve has acknowledged in another thread (http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1058) that FPL has recently made certain other caller-id related changes and its timing coincides very well with the time this problem surfaced. It does seem that the two are related - maybe try rolling back that change to see if it fixes this issue.

Not the same issue or part of the server - won't affect this - sorry.
As I've said before, absolutely nothing has changed with how we send out the caller-ID. It's literally one line in the SIP log that goes out to the carrier, and it's looked the same since day 1 of freephoneline. Past this, the call is then out of our hands and into the hands of whoever is terminating it.

[yyzyyz]

Don't know what you guys did, but CallerID magically started working again today (for direct as well as forwarded calls)!!!

Thanks.