Message So this is a loaded question...
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
| 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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