| reply to rchandra
Re: VoIP companies are doing the innovating! said by rchandra:
What's mentioned is really what's needed: if the business or the carrier with which they contract for telecom services is unwilling or incapable of passing the data automatically, the caller needs to dial in some sort of identification for my review, or they don't get through.
If I'm remembering this correctly, what VoicePulse does is give you the option to block all anonymous calls completely, or to give anonymous callers the option to punch in the number they are calling from. If you choose the latter option, and a caller whose caller-ID info is blocked chooses to touch in a number (which could be just about ANY ten digit number, so they could for example touch in their own home or office phone number, or anything you might recognize), it appears in the NAME field of the caller ID display (the number field shows all zeroes). This makes it easy to distinguish between an actual caller-ID delivered number, and a caller-entered one.
Note that if the caller doesn't attempt to enter a number at all, your phone never rings. Most telemarketers won't even attempt to guess a number, so you aren't bothered by them. Should a really brazen one make the attempt, they probably won't punch in anything you'd recognize.
So basically you could tell anyone who needs to be able to get through the anonymous call rejection to punch in their normal home or office number, or any 10-digit number that would cause you to pick up the call. As far as I know, among the VoIP providers, only VoicePulse offers a feature anything like this at present. |
