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Lookup by Twilio

twilio.com

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Re: Lookup by Twilio

#61

Post by Scoundreller »

mikeroher wrote: post #52
pgib wrote: post #3

My telco was charging $8/month for visual voicemail, so I opted to buy a Twilio number for $1/month, and set my phone to forward no answer/busy/unavailable to a simple Twilio app I wrote that handles voicemail. When someone leaves me a message, I get an SMS with the message and caller details. I've been using OpenCNAM ( https://www.opencnam.com ) for the caller ID look-up. I implemented something similar for our offi…

I'm looking to set up something up like this. Could you post the source of your simple app?

For the same reasons ($1/monthWith VOIP.ms, I ordered a DID and set it to auto-answer any call. They have a voicemail feature you can use, so it handles the recorded message and recording after the beep. Voip.ms then emails you the voicemail (nice for recordkeeping). If your cellular provider has an email to SMS gateway, you can forward the email there, and you'll see the callerid in the subject, but no CNAM to speak of.

Once working, I set my cellphone to auto-direct any unanswered calls to the DID I setup.

Here's how some Canadians are doing it: http://awslookup.com/free-voice-mail-on-wind-mobile/

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#62

Post by mikeroher »

Scoundreller wrote: post #61
mikeroher wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm looking to set up something up like this. Could you post the source of your simple app?

For the same reasons ($1/month With VOIP.ms, I ordered a DID and set it to auto-answer any call. They have a voicemail feature you can use, so it handles the recorded message and recording after the beep. Voip.ms then emails you the voicemail (nice for recordkeeping). If your cellular provider has an email to SMS gateway, you can forward the email there, and you'll see the callerid in the subject, but no CNAM to spea…

Shit, that's a lot cheaper, faster and easier. I just spent 3+ hours trying to get Twilio to do the same thing. Thanks a lot!

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#64

Post by christop »

jonursenbach wrote: post #8

Wish they returned city, state, and ZIP information for domestic numbers like Telesign does. Telesign is outrageously expensive.

Yeah, I was pretty surprised that this wasn't there.

I tried a bunch of UK numbers for big cities (and my US mobile number) and none had city information.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#65

Post by EvanDotPro »

Wow, $0.005 is incredibly expensive for carrier lookups. I run an SMS gateway and our cost for this is $0.0001 per lookup from our primary provider and $0.0002 from our backup provider. Of course we are dealing in bulk but Twilio should be too...

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#66

Post by EvanDotPro »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #58
jonknee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you currently using? It seems odd that the current connection status is something that is shared.

Yeah, I don't even know how that would be possible unless it's owned by one of the phone companies and is only available for their users. I highly doubt any telco would share that data publicly, especially if all you need is the subscriber's number.

This is likely done with something called an HLR lookup via SS7. I believe it was explained to me that HLR lookups are meant for call setup and SMS routing, NOT for exposing network information via web services, but that doesn't stop companies with SS7 access from doing it anyway since there are plenty of people willing to pay for that information.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#67

Post by EvanDotPro »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #60
Animats wrote: post #49

US carrier info is way out of date. It shows one of my numbers as Sprint, but it was ported to T-Mobile over a year ago. That used to be the curse of Google Voice. They'd only send SMS to a mobile number, but their database for recognizing mobile numbers was terrible. It does recognize a Twilo number properly, though.

That's because there's no real way for them to know you moved a number. Nobody knows you moved the number except the two companies involved. So, unless they had direct access to the customer records of each telco, they can only guess by the original owner.

This is not true at all. I can give you the current provider of a number that had been ported and my data will reflect a new port within minutes of it taking effect. Oh, and it's an order of magnitude cheaper than what Twilio is charging for this... I couldn't tell you why Twilio's implementation is out of date and so expensive.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#68

Post by nileshtrivedi »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #60
Animats wrote: post #49

US carrier info is way out of date. It shows one of my numbers as Sprint, but it was ported to T-Mobile over a year ago. That used to be the curse of Google Voice. They'd only send SMS to a mobile number, but their database for recognizing mobile numbers was terrible. It does recognize a Twilo number properly, though.

That's because there's no real way for them to know you moved a number. Nobody knows you moved the number except the two companies involved. So, unless they had direct access to the customer records of each telco, they can only guess by the original owner.

That can't be true. If a number was ported from Carrier X to Carrier Y and someone makes a call originating from carrier Z, I am pretty sure carrier X is not involved any more in the routing of the call, which means that carrier Z has some way to figure out which carrier to route to (Y in this case). So it's not just those two companies involved.

At least in India, there exists a central database of ported numbers which every carrier uses to do the routing.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#69

Post by bradgessler »

EvanDotPro wrote: post #65

Wow, $0.005 is incredibly expensive for carrier lookups. I run an SMS gateway and our cost for this is $0.0001 per lookup from our primary provider and $0.0002 from our backup provider. Of course we are dealing in bulk but Twilio should be too...

Twilio is great for small scale applications, but as you point out they're very expensive if you're doing anything at scale.

Re: Lookup by Twilio

#70

Post by EvanDotPro »

alexkinch wrote: post #53
robotfelix wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the carrier it returns and the brand of network aren't necessarily the same - at least here in the UK. For example the Giffgaff network is carried by O2, and a UK landline rented through Twilio appears to be carried by Jersey Telecom.

See my answer here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300690 - about why you're getting O2 for a Giffgaff number (Giffgaff is an O2 MVNO, and owned by O2's parent Telefonica as it happens). Re: a Twilio UK landline number coming up as JT, as you're probably looking at the results of a SS7-MAP command that returns the SMS routing info for a particular number, in this case it's likely that JT look after the SMS si…

Ah, glad someone else with experience is in this thread. You've saved me a bunch of typing.
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