Screening Out Cell Phones

[upstatemike]

I have decided that I am tired of dealing with people who call me on cell phones. They never seem to hear the static and other problems at their end while I strain to understand what they are trying to say. I don't have any problems when people call me from a land line so I am thinking of just filtering out cell phone calls completely.

Looking for the best way to implement this and I am thinking of using something like Homeseer Phone to read an incoming number and then do a reverse lookup to see if the number is from a wireless provider or a regular phone company. I can then direct cell phone calls to a recording asking the caller to try back using a land line. Anybody done something like this? Any script examples or suggestions for alternate hardware/software to accomplish this?

 

[IVB]

2 thoughts:

1) Are these friends, or anyone? If it's just friends, then if you have all their #s, you could look into a live compare with your phone book. To do everyone, i'd think you'd have to slowly build up a list of exchanges unless there's some easy way to determine which exchanges are land vs cell.

2) Given that CID info isn't available until between the 1st & 2nd ring, just making sure you realize that you'd never be able to pick up the phone until at least ring2 (assuming your script dumps the call dang quick), potentially between ring2->3. If you have an answering machine that answers the phone on ring4, you now only have a 1.5 second window to get the phone.

Just wondering if you'd be more frustrated with the cure than the disease.

 

[Mike]

Well he could disable the ringing until he had enough information to decide to let it go through... he does have a stargate...

In some cases the area code would work, but in others that is not enough, the prefixes might be published for cell phones. A lot of data work to get there, but I would guess the information is out there.

You probably only need a fraction though and could just add to your own database until they don't get through anymore.

 

[IVB]

yeah, in SF, you need the exchange [the 3 digit prefix], as everyone has either 415/925/510/408 for their area codes, both land & cell.

 

[JohnWPB]

Wow, I could never do something like that here. Myself, and many of my family and friends have dropped the home phone service completely. I HAVE to have a home phone for the DSL to work. BUT I NEVER give that number out to anyone important, and never answer it. It goes straight to a machine on the first ring, and all the ringers in the house are turned off. When I say I dont give it out to "anyone important" I mean it is essentially my "Spam Inbox". I rarely ever check the answering machine, if it's important, they have my cell #.


You could alienate a lot of people doing this, ar at least really tick them off! If your significant other, friend, relative or whoever has car trouble, an emergency, or a host of any other problems, they will not be able to get through. Personally I think this is just a bad idea, BUT thats just MY opionion.

 

[upstatemike]

You could alienate a lot of people doing this, ar at least really tick them off! If your significant other, friend, relative or whoever has car trouble, an emergency, or a host of any other problems, they will not be able to get through. Personally I think this is just a bad idea, BUT thats just MY opionion.

Not being a real friendly guy at the best of times the alienation thing is not an issue. The emergency call aspect does bear some serious consideration though... thanks for pointing it out.

 

[upstatemike]

Just wondering if you'd be more frustrated with the cure than the disease.

A valid point. I guess I need to ponder this some more.

 

[Rupp]

Someone wrote a reverse lookup script for HomeSeer phone a while back that would look up the number and automatically add the name from the look up to the HS address book. I'm not sure how this would make anyone mad. If you find out that they are on a cell phone just dump them to VM in a couple of rings. They still get a chance to leave a message. How do they know if you are home or not? Surely you know who in you phone book would be calling in case of an emergency and these could be added to the address book as "full ring" callers.

Also for us it's easy to know which are cell calls and which are not. All cell phone calls come in as all numbers via callerID and land line come in with a name. I hate the fact that all cell calls come in with number only but this makes it easy.

 

[Tink]

The reverse lookup won't work because it is spotty at best, and most cell phone numbers are not published in the online directories anyway.

What I find is that cell phone calls have caller-ID Names of the state that the cell phone is from - at least that is how Verizon provides the info to my house. Thus, if you got CID name and number, then a phone number accompanied by the name "Maryland" is likely a cell phone user in Maryland.

With the Way2Call Hi-Phone hardware, it can eat the incoming rings until CID information is available, and then with your address book entries matching the name of MARYLAND set to have the system answer immediately, the caller would go to voicemail and you would never hear the phone ring. If it is not a cell caller, then you would hear HomeSeer announce the caller without trying to hear it over the rings of the phones in the house.

As for callers you want to get through, I use a call script (IVR - Interactive Voice Response - HomeSeer proprietary phone script language) that prompts callers whose Caller-ID says "Out of Area". It says that your phone number is not familiar to us - please enter a phone number or leave a message after the tone. If it is somebody we know, then the number they enter is in our HomeSeer address book, and so the call is then rung through to the house. If their number is not in the address book, they are prompted to leave a message. It would not be too hard to modify that script to do that for your cell phone callers as well.

 

[Mike]

You could always do a 'What? I can't hear you! Can you call me back on a land-line" (whether or not you can) after a time or two I wouldn't bother calling on a cell phone.

Too low-tech I know...

 

[MeSteve]

You could always do a 'What? I can't hear you! Can you call me back on a land-line" (whether or not you can) after a time or two I wouldn't bother calling on a cell phone.

Too low-tech I know...

But you could record it as a .wav and have it play

 

[Rupp]

You could always do a 'What? I can't hear you! Can you call me back on a land-line" (whether or not you can) after a time or two I wouldn't bother calling on a cell phone.

Too low-tech I know...

The problem with this approach is several of our friends and my kids friends parents no longer have land lines. It amazes me how many people have gone totally cellular.

 

[Digger]

If you rent, move often, or dont use the phone much the cost for a landline installation is prohibative sometimes. I know that when I bought my house 6 years ago I piad Verizon $225 for an install where the wire was already run to the house. All the guy had to do was splice it at junction box on the pole and come inside and test it (the house was empty one day from the previous owner).

It was a ripoff but I had no choice at the time. When I wanted a second line I waited until the cable company provided phone service and got free install.