said by idbit:I thought I read that in the US, the CNAM that appears on a call coming in to you is determined by your provider - not anything that is set by the caller or his provider. Which would make Outbound CNAM a pointless feature for somebody in the US that only calls US people. Am I wrong about that?
There is an authoritative source (the Line Information Database) that all LECs (local exchange carriers -- the companies that provide DIDs to VoIP providers) are required to maintain.
In the US, "outbound CNAM" means entering a CNAM value into this LIDB.
If the call recipient's phone company is willing to pay to access the caller's LIDB, they will be able to access this CNAM value and display it to their customer.
Sometimes, the call recipient's phone company doesn't want to pay to access the caller's LIDB, so they subscribe to a third party CNAM database.
This database collects caller name information from other sources, such as phone book listings, and is a guess what the caller's name is. It's also generally much more economical as a single company can provide this information, rather than a number of companies spread out through the country (one for each major telco plus a few independents).