From: Greg Tompkins Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: ANI vs CALLER ID Date: Sun Jun 4 20:27:55 1995 The other day, I called a company and requested information. The lady said "I have your number as [my phone number] an ANI listing". How did she do this? Is there a device that would let me do this to know who is calling? How is this different than Caller ID? Another question about ANI. I called 1-800-MY-ANI-IS with my cell phone and it gave a totally different number than what my cell number is. I tried to call the number that ANI gave me and it said "You have reached a disconnected number." Why doesn't it give my regular number? I was roaming once, and it gave me the number of the phone. GREG [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ANI and Caller-ID are quite similar but not entirely the same. The end result is the same; the called party gets the phone number of the caller. From residence phones, for all intents and purposes the information via Caller-ID and/or ANI is one and the same. When you call an 800 number, you *cannot* withhold your number from the called party. The use of *67 is overridden by ANI delivery. Sometimes ANI is delivered after the fact -- like once a month with the phone bill -- and it can also be delivered in realtime, just like Caller-ID on display units. Most large companies get it in realtime as well as on their bill each month. Cellular phones seem to always deliver 'out of area' messages to Caller- ID boxes. Where ANI is concerned, they always seem to deliver the number of the outgoing trunk line on the cellular carrier's system rather than the actual cellphone number itself. I don't know why. When I used my cell phone to call my 800 number, the 800 ANI a month later on the bill showed a number which when traced through the Ameritech Name and Address service came back listed to something called the 'IBT Company' at a *suburban* address (even though the cell phone was a 312 number). Further checking into that address showed it was a telco central office building. Dialing the number got the message that the number was not in service for incoming calls. I don't know why they do things the way they do. PAT]