Wrong caller IDs resulting in your calls not going through
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Wednesday, 24th October, 2018
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14:04pm
The numbering regulations as published by ICASA are currently causing quite a bit of havoc in the market with calls not being connected when incomplete or wrong caller ids are displayed. The reason for this is that in the case of a caller ID that does not conform to the correct standard, the rate of connecdting those calls are much higher - at times 20 times higher.
So all operators are currently attempting to implement mechanism to automatically reject calls that do not conform. As a result of that we have had scenarios where other operators (MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom, Neotel, etc) have rejected calls that were perfectly fine in the way that they carried the caller ID. There was a case of that this morning where out of the blue a whole lot of calls were not accepted. We have taken this up in the strongest of terms with the other carriers - we are aware that they do not have a choice but to start blocking calls that do NOT conform, but in the process of implementing those systems it really should not be affecting correct calls. This issue is being addressed on an industry level.
For those clients who configure their own systems to set caller IDs - please ensure that your caller ID is valid and is in E164 format. In other words 27212861000 for example. While local fomat (0212861000) should be acceptable it's become clear that other carriers are having difficulty with that format so it's best to avoid it. The wrong number of digits or the wrong format will for sure result in your calls being rejected upstream.
Should you have any questions, email me at helpme@instantbilling.co.za
