Telephony Research

We build awesome telephony services.

[telephonyresearch]

OpenCNAM V1 Deprecation

As many of you know, one of our main products, OpenCNAM (http://www.opencnam.com/), launched a new V2 API earlier this year. We launched our V2 API to help make OpenCNAM a better product for our users.

With our new V2 API we:

Added more functionality to our backend.

Fixed various inconsistencies in our user-facing API.

Made numerous performance improvements to make our API responses faster for our users.

Added more (and better quality) telco sources to improve our overall CNAM data quality.

Added support for volume pricing (we now offer discounts up to 50m monthly queries, and beyond!).

Made numerous improvements to our website, client libraries, and user portal.

Today, we've seen more than 95% of our users (and existing application developers) shift their code over from our V1 API to our V2 API, which is why we're officially announcing that as of September 1, 2013, we are officially shutting down our old V1 API.

What does this mean for you (as an OpenCNAM user)?

If you're currently using our V1 API (if you see a v1 anywhere in your URL) you'll need to upgrade your application code and point your code towards our new V2 API by September 1, 2013.

In most cases, you can simply change your URL string from: https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/... to https://api.opencnam.com/v2/phone/... -- and that's all!

If you have any questions, concerns, issues, etc. -- we'll be available to help you out with the migration. You can reach us at anytime via our support email: [email protected].

With our V1 API closing down, we're going to be doubling our work efforts on OpenCNAM.

In the near future we're planning to:

Release a user account API, which allows you to pragmatically query your OpenCNAM account history (billing, payments, queries, etc.).

Add a variety of new telco data sources to further improve our CNAM data quality (we currently offer the best industry-wide CNAM data quality by pulling our data from as many top-level sources as possible).

Release a new CNAM storage product, which allows you (as an OpenCNAM user) to set your own CNAM records for phones you control -- we'll handle the CNAM propagation to the public telephone network.

While we're sad to close down our V1 API, we're extremely happy to continue to work with the smartest and most awesome customers in the industry, and we're extremely excited to launch our highly anticipated OpenCNAM features and updates in the coming months.

Randall Degges (CTO)

[telephonyresearch]

Freeswitch + OpenCNAM

 Are you a [Freeswitch](http://freeswitch.org/) user who'd like to get Caller ID Name for your PBX? If so, you're in the right place. You've probably Google'd around for a while, looking for a decent CNAM provider, but only found horrible websites and expensive options. Not anymore! We at Telephony Research are happy to announce easy Freeswitch integration with our flagship API company, [OpenCNAM](https://www.opencnam.com/). Using Freeswitch's built-in cidlookup module, you can now easily interface with OpenCNAM to get: - High quality CNAM information in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, and many more places. - Cheap CNAM (pricing starts at $.004 per successful query). - Easy payment options (single deposits, automatic billing, or bitcoin payments). - World class support from our engineering staff. If you're a hobbyist user, and your Freeswitch PBX doesn't do more than few calls per hour, you can get CNAM with us absolutely free, no signup required! If you've been looking for a simple CNAM provider that works well with Freeswitch, give OpenCNAM a try right now :) You can create an OpenCNAM account here: https://www.opencnam.com/ You can read our Freeswitch integration guide here: https://www.opencnam.com/docs/v2/pbx#freeswitch

[telephonyresearch]

Our Solution

Here at **Telephony Research**, we like to build things. To be more specific: we like to build telephony services. To be even more specific, we like to build *kick-ass* telephony services. ## The Problem The entire telephony world sucks right now. Since the mid 1900s, very little has changed in the telephony landscape. - The PSTN is still a huge legacy network controlled by several extremely large corporations. - Making phone calls is expensive (1 cent or more, per minute). - Getting phone numbers (DIDs) is still not a simple thing (number blocks are assigned to various companies, which typically require you to have voice service with your DID). - Caller ID Name is not supported over cellular networks. - There is a complete lack of international standards for making phone calls and receiving / sending Caller ID name. - International telephony is insanely expensive. - VoIP carriers tend to have issues with low quality voice. - The industry is plagued with horrible sales practices (sales guys, manual provisioning, etc.). - There is a total lack of operational transparency with most telcos, you have no idea what is being done, how things work, or any other data. - Most voice traffic is completely un-encrypted, making the entire industry vulnerable to numerous security problems. - And MUCH more. What all these problems really boil down to is lack of openness and talent. While the web has really taken off, attracting tons of developers and money, telecommunications has remained largely unattractive to programmers. Since many telecommunications protocols are complex, cost a lot of money to work with, and not adequately documented--the telecommunications industry has succeeded in: - Keeping new developers out of the industry. - Lowering the bar for development talent (thereby decreasing overall product and service quality). - Making progress slower and slower as time progresses. This is completely unacceptable. ## My Two Cents I'm a programmer. When I first got introduced to the telephony world, I was shocked at how hard it was to find: - Information on telephony technologies. - Getting started information. - How the public telephone network works, and what technologies are used. - How old the protocols and technologies are that power voice services. - How many insane regulations and laws there are which only serve to make the industry worse (in numerous ways) for consumers. If telephony technologies were simpler and more modern, then instead of keeping new developers **away**, new developers would be attracted to the industry, and be better equipped to build services, companies, and projects that make users happy. In almost every industry--if you have more developers working in the field, progress will be quicker, users will be happier, and more wealth will be generated (by all parties). ## Our Solution Our solution to the current problems of the industry is simple: **we build services which make telephony simpler and more elegant for developers**. Our hope is that by providing tools that developers can easily build on top of, we'll: - Enable new developers to easily get involved in the industry. - Educate developers on how the technologies work, and how they can be improved upon. - Encourage competition from new startups. - Enable developers to generate better products and services that consumers will **love**. To this end, we're heavily focused on continuous improvement. Every day we work tirelessly to fix bugs, add new features, and reduce complexity in our software--and make the telephony industry just a tad bit better--line by line. If you're a developer thinking about getting involved in some new technologies: don't hesitate! Feel free to shoot us an email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and get in touch--we'd love to help you out in any way possible. And if you're interested in checking out what we're up to, be sure to: - [Visit our company page.](https://www.telephonyresearch.com/) - [Follow us on Twitter.](https://twitter.com/telephonyres) - [Follow us on Facebook.](https://www.facebook.com/telephonyresearch) Let's do this thing.

[telephonyresearch]

FreePBX CNAM Integration

 A few minutes ago I finished writing the [OpenCNAM FreePBX integration documentation](https://www.opencnam.com/docs/v2/pbx). This means that if you're using any FreePBX phone system, you can now get OpenCNAM's awesome Caller ID Name support with just a minute of your time! As you may already know, since the launch of our new website and API backend, we've had thousands of users (PBX users, VoIP carriers, and even large enterprises) start using OpenCNAM to make Caller ID integration simple in their phone systems, mobile apps, and data tools. With our two new OpenCNAM plans, you can easily get Caller ID name information on your FreePBX system in one of two ways: - By using our free Hobbyist Tier (which allows you to do 60 cached CNAM dips per hour), or - Our Professional Tier (which allows you to do an unlimited amount of real-time CNAM dips). If you're running a small PBX system, you can instantly start using our Hobbyist Tier completely for free, without signing up, creating an account, or anything at all. If you'd like to get real-time CNAM information, you can create an OpenCNAM account (https://www.opencnam.com/register), and pay a small fee $.004 (four tenths of a cent!) for each successful real-time lookup. Regardless of your needs, we're trying to make OpenCNAM the best (and simplest) CNAM platform available. If you're a FreePBX user, get started right now: https://www.opencnam.com/docs/v2/pbx

[telephonyresearch]

New OpenCNAM Website is Live!

 Hello everyone! Several months ago we completely redesigned our CNAM service ([OpenCNAM](https://www.opencnam.com/)), wrote a new backend API, and started a public beta program. Through the duration of our beta program we signed up several hundred users, did hundreds of millions of CNAM lookups, fixed a lot of bugs, and made a lot of system improvements. Over the last few months we've been working to close our beta program and publicly launch OpenCNAM. We (the entire OpenCNAM team) are extremely happy to introduce you to the new OpenCNAM website: https://www.opencnam.com/ We've redesigned the site from the ground up to be simple, usable, and quick. You can now create accounts automatically, make one time deposits with either typical debit / credit cards OR bitcoin, and even configure automatic billing to prevent your account balance from running out. We've also rolled out our two new public OpenCNAM plans: - Our Hobbyist Tier, which allows you to do 60 cached CNAM lookups per hour, and requires no account, no registration, and no signup. - Our Professional Tier, which returns only real-time CNAM information, and costs $.004 (four tenths of a cent) per successful query. We'd love for you to check out the new site, play around with things, and let us know what you think: https://www.opencnam.com/ - The OpenCNAM Team

[telephonyresearch]

Telephone Number API

 A long time, when we built our first product ([TNID](http://tnid.us/)), we also built an internal API for getting various data points about phone numbers. Our internal API gave us access to lots of metadata about phone numbers such as: - City - State - Zipcode - Country of Origin - Subscriber Name - Subscriber Address - Current Provider - Original Provider - SMS -> email address - And lots more Over time we've added numerous sources to our internal API, gradually improving the quality of information, as well as reducing our internal cost for digging up the data. When we released our first publicly available API, [OpenCNAM](https://www.opencnam.com/), the one question we received more than any other from our beta users was: "what other data points are you adding?" We're pleased to say that over the past few months we've been not only cleaning up our internal API, but speeding it up, adding a variety of new data sources, and generally making it much more robust. In the next several months we plan on releasing our new telephone number API (tnapi) to the public, and we'd like you to be one of our first beta testers! If you sign up for our beta program, you'll get information about tnapi's development, progress, and you'll be the first to use the API (completely free, of course) while in development. [Sign up here!](http://signup.tnapi.com/) Thanks for tagging along on our telephony journey.

[telephonyresearch]

New Site and Blog Live

 Over the past few days we've been working on some internal company projects, namely, launching an official company site so we have a real web presence, and moving our blog to a new platform (we're on [Tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/) now). Our new site is located at: [https://www.telephonyresearch.com/](https://www.telephonyresearch.com/). While we're still in the process of adding to our site and blog, please check them both out and leave a comment! We'd love to hear your feedback on how the new site / blog looks. That's all for now, back to coding! >:)

[telephonyresearch]

Company Brand Almost Ready!

 As I mentioned in our [previous post](http://telephonyresearch.tumblr.com/post/28473677716/what-were-up-to), one of the things we've been working on lately is a new company brand. Up until now, we've purely focused on building useful telephony sevices, without spending much time on the company side of things. Now that we've got several popular services out there, we figured we should probably throw up a proper company site so that in the future it will be easier to show off our products, have a home base, and hire some incredibly awesome engineers to work with us. Here are the things we've been working on over the past couple of weeks in regard to preparing our new company brand: - Building a really awesome single page company site which shows off our products, our team, our tech, and other stuff. - Getting a proper company logo to use across our online services. - Messing around with various blogging options, and working on a new theme that matches our new brand appropriately. At this moment we're putting the finishing touches on our company site, and will hopefully be launching it within the next few days, along with our new blog, logo, and everything. More updates to come!

[telephonyresearch]

What We're Up To

 While our blog has been quiet for a while now, I'm hoping to change that. To get things kickstarted, I thought I'd share some of the neat things we've been working on over the past several months here at Telephony Research. # Growing OpenCNAM Since we launched [OpenCNAM](https://www.opencnam.com/) a few months ago, we've been lucky enough to see an enormous developer response. From day one, we've been inundated with beta requests, private contracts, open source integrations, and essentially--more business than we could handle. To our complete surprise, even months after launch, we're still signing up a handful of beta users every day. Since we received such an enormous response, we've been working hard over the past few months to: - Launch a public developer portal with integrated billing, API metrics, and other standard stats. - Completely rewrite our API documentation to make OpenCNAM even more accessible to new users. - Develop a large amount of high-quality OpenCNAM plugins for various phone systems, programming languages, and hardware devices. - Decrease API response times as much as possible. - Scale to support increased developer demand. I'm happy to announce that to date, we've already made significant progress in all these target areas, and are quickly approaching a public launch! Not only have we completely rewritten our API backend for speed, but we've made several other internal optimizations which will have a large effect once deployed. Our number one concern is still to make OpenCNAM the simplest, most elegant, and most affordable way to get accurate caller ID name information. Watch out telcos, **we're coming for you**! # Building a General Purpose API While OpenCNAM is currently our only public API service, we've actually been hard at work on another API company behind the scenes as well. While I won't divulge too much information at this point, we're in the process of building a general purpose telephony data API that will allow you to (among other things): - Get CNAM information. - Get location information. - Get carrier information. - Get email-to-SMS domain information. - Get equipment information. - And much more. This process has been ongoing for quite some time now, but we're doing our best to finish things up, and get a beta online. Our hope is that our soon to come general purpose API will be a one stop telephony data service. # Building our Brand Since we currently have a variety of active services and products, one of the things we're in the process of is unifying our brand, and getting all our design in order. This includes redoing the design for a majority of our web properties, this blog, and building an official company site. Our goal in the future is to have a developer friendly company site which fully explains our goals, ambition, purpose, and provides plenty of information for curious developers looking to see what we do. We're hoping this will allow us to more easily manage our services in the future, and provide a home base for our product news, blog, open source contributions, and a variety of other things. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed for future updates!

[telephonyresearch]

OpenCNAM Has a Python API!

 Hello fellow programmers. As you may know, here at Telephony Research, we like to build cool things. Several weeks ago we [announced](http://blog.telephonyresearch.com/making-caller-id-more-accessible) a new project we've been building ([OpenCNAM](https://www.opencnam.com/)) that we hope will make getting caller ID data as easy as possible. Since we're all programmers, I won't bore you with the non-technical details about why we built OpenCNAM. All you need to know is that OpenCNAM now has: - A beautiful REST API ([read our docs](https://docs.opencnam.com/)). - A brand new Python API that makes getting caller ID information a piece of cake. Here's some python code below (using our new [python-opencnam project](https://github.com/telephonyresearch/python-opencnam)) that loops through 60 US phone numbers, printing out their caller ID name information: As you can see, all we're really doing here is importing the **Phone** class, and then building **Phone** objects, and printing off both their **number** and **cnam** (caller ID name) attributes. I challenge you to find a simpler way (in Python) to get caller ID name information. Anyhow, if you're building an application that could benefit from caller ID--why not give [python-opencnam](https://github.com/telephonyresearch/python-opencnam) a try? In addition to it's insanely simple usage, here are some other benefits: - It's getting data straight from the public telephone network. This means you're getting REAL caller ID name information. The same stuff that your telephone company sends all over the world. We don't modify or taint the data at all. - It supports almost any imaginable format of US phone number. You can do lookups for '+1 222 333 \\\\\.....4444', and it'll handle it just fine. Why even bother parsing input? Don't waste your time! - [OpenCNAM](http://www.opencnam.com/) has a generous free tier. No API key needed. You can make up to 60 requests per minute (for free). Once the paid version is available, you'll be able to register and optionally specify an API key so you can make unlimited queries without throttling. Seriously though, if you're looking to build any sort of telephony related project, give us a try! Furthermore: if you're using our API, we'd love to hear from you. Feel free to send us an email ([[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])). We're planning on writing some featured articles here on our blog, all about projects that programmers have built using us as a backend. And if you have any questions or comments, leave a comment.

[telephonyresearch]

FreeCNAM is reborn as OpenCNAM

 The Free CNAM Project was launched less than 10 months ago, in response to a large number of requests for access to the API backend used by [http://tnid.us/](http://tnid.us). In the months since its inception, FreeCNAM.org has grown in popularity, becoming the de facto source for Caller ID Name in the PBX developer and hobbyist communities. Expanding demand, coupled with requests for high-availability, carrier-grade service, led to the need for a complete ground-up rebuild of the entire system. We, at Telephony Research Services, are proud to announce that this rebuild is complete, and that this high-availability, carrier-grade service has entered beta testing. Tomorrow, the Free CNAM servers will be switched off. With a few simple keystrokes, this project will come to a close; an end to an era, and the beginning of another. Like the phoenix emerging from its ashes, FreeCNAM is reborn as OpenCNAM. OpenCNAM is **completely free to most users**, allowing 60 dips per hour without registration. For those requiring higher volume, an API key is required. Although pricing has not yet been established, once the beta period is over we expect to charge around $0.001 per successful query. We invite former FreeCNAM users to participate in our beta. Beta participants will be allowed unlimited free CNAM dips during the entirety of the beta period, and will be offered discounted rates should they decide to become customers at the end of the beta period. Please contact [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) to request an API key for OpenCNAM. - OpenCNAM Project: [https://www.opencnam.com/](https://www.opencnam.com/) - Documentation: [https://docs.opencnam.com/](https://docs.opencnam.com/) - Sample Code: [https://github.com/telephonyresearch](https://github.com/telephonyresearch)

[telephonyresearch]

Caller ID - Now Even Simpler

In my last [post](http://telephonyresearch.tumblr.com/post/25205956321/getting-caller-id-data-via-the-cli), I wrote about the new CLI app I hacked together a few days ago, [cnam](https://github.com/telephonyresearch/cnam). In this post, I'll talk about the new cnam release I just made, and what cool stuff it does. When we released **cnam** a few days ago, it was an instant hit. **cnam** is a simple command line utility (written in python) that allows you to get caller ID information in your terminal. You pass in a phone number (10-digits), and it spits back that person's up-to-date caller ID name information. If you're a programmer (like I am), you're probably familiar with shipping code quickly and getting feedback. So, per our feedback (thanks everyone!), I've pushed a new release of **cnam** online, which has the following updates: - You can now specify a phone number in almost any format imaginable. The **cnam** app now accepts phone numbers spaced out as well (no need to do any custom formatting). - **cnam** now accepts 11-digit valid US phone numbers. This means you can prefix your numbers with a '1' if you'd like and nothing bad will happen. Here's a screenshot showing some of the new number combinations now possible since the update:  To get the new version of **cnam** install on your system, you can do a simple upgrade by running the following command (on debian-based systems): `sudo pip install -U cnam`. Also: don't forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. Seriously. We are writing about more and more interesting things every day! If you're passionate about programming, and can't stand going a day without getting your fix--you won't want to miss a post!

[telephonyresearch]

Getting Caller ID Data via the CLI

 Since the BETA launch of our company, [opencnam](https://www.opencnam.com), I've been thinking of fun apps to build that use the API. In the off chance you haven't heard, opencnam is an API company for programmers (like you and I) that provides caller ID name data. opencnam lets you build cool data applications, phone applications, and pretty much anything else that can benefit from knowing more about a person given their phone number. The other day I had an hour or so to hack on something, so I quickly brainstormed a CLI app that will take in a phone number and spit out the caller ID associated with that number. The app is called [cnam](https://github.com/telephonyresearch/cnam), and is available on our public [GitHub account](https://github.com/telephonyresearch). To install cnam on any debian-based OS, install the python-pip package, and then run the command `sudo pip install cnam`. Once you've got the package installed, you can lookup any caller ID information by running the command `cnam phone_number`. Here are a couple examples: The cnam command accepts 10-digit phone numbers in almost any format. Any characters you use in defining the phone number are stripped out, so you can represent it in almost any form imaginable. If you're a python programmer, be sure to check out the cnam source code. It's a great example app that shows how to use the opencnam API in a simple manner. As usual, be sure to follow our RSS feed! Although we don't have many posts here yet, over the coming weeks and months we'll be writing about our startup journeys and technical escapades!

[telephonyresearch]

Making Caller ID More Accessible

 As I mentioned in my [last post](http://telephonyresearch.tumblr.com/post/25205944976/caller-id-sucks), caller ID sucks. Here at Telephony Research, we're continuously looking for new ways to make telephony more accessible for developers. To this end, we're currently building a new API company for developers, [opencnam](https://www.opencnam.com/), that will make getting caller ID data a breeze. I've talked about this before, but the fact remains: if you're a programmer trying to get / use caller ID data--you're out of luck. Caller ID data is typically expensive, hard to get (there are no API companies around that provide this data in an easily consumable format), and ugly. opencnam will change this. # opencnam: Caller ID Made Easy While opencnam is still in BETA mode, it's already improving the telephony data landscape by providing accurate, up-to-date, and cheap (free!) caller ID information for programmers like you and I, who want access to telephony data without the bullshit. To make getting started with opencnam easy, we've specifically architectured the API to be as simple as possible. Here are some of the cool features you'll notice right off the bat: - You don't need to register on our site to use the API. - You don't need an API key. - You don't need to give us money (we do have a paid plan coming, but that will be for serious production application usage). - We support all the popular serialization formats: plain text, JSON, JSONP, YAML, and XML. - Our responses are FAST. - Our free tier is generous: you can make 60 requests per hour before throttling kicks in. That's more than enough for most small applications. - We do everything over HTTPs to keep your data safe. - We have awesome [documentation](https://docs.opencnam.com/). - We're available in [IRC](irc://irc.freenode.net/#opencnam) to help with questions / implementation. And when I say the API is easy to use, I really do mean it. Don't beleive me? Give this a try right now: `curl https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111?format=text` Easy, right? # Our Goals Our goal with opencnam is to make caller ID easy. We're tired of going through hoops to do things that should be simple. As with all our projects, we want to modernize the telephony industry. We want to make the entire telephony world simpler, more accessible, and most of all--**more fun**. Despite the bad reputation telephony has for being impossible to learn and use, there are a lot of awesome things telephony lets you do. As programmers and hackers ourselves, we want you to be able to have as much fun writing telephony code as we do. If you're interested in learning more about our adventures to revolutionize the telephony world, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed!

[telephonyresearch]

Caller ID Sucks

 **Caller ID sucks.** There, I said it. As someone who's been working in the telephony industry for nearly three years now, I can't stress enough how awful caller ID is. Not only is it difficult to get when you need it (where's a good public API to handle that sorta thing?)--but it is expensive: most VoIP providers charge between 1 and 2 cents just to lookup the caller ID name for a single phone number! How ludicrous is that? Paying between 1 and 2 cents just to find out who's calling you? Unacceptable. If there were better caller ID options out there, every industry would benefit. Not only could cheaper caller ID provide useful information for companies (being able to detect your customers' names when they call into your phone system adds a nice personal touch), but it would greatly benefit normal people like you and me. How often do you receive calls on your cell phone from those annoying automatic survey things? I get at least a few a week. Having caller ID name information available on cell phones would be great! You'd be able to screen your calls immediately, without the hassle of picking up your calls just to get harassed by telemarketers. Here at Telephony Research, we've actually been working on some caller ID industry hacks. Over the next few weeks, we'll write about what we've been working on, and how it can help you. If you hate caller ID as much as we do, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed. While our blog is still new--we're going to be writing about telephony topics, programming topics, and general startup / tech stuff.

[telephonyresearch]

Why Telephony?

 Telephony. Just saying the word makes most developers cringe in fear. I'm not going to lie, I used to absolutely *hate* telephony. First of all, it's almost impossible to get any reliable, organized information on the topic anywhere online. Sure there are places like [VoIP Info](http://www.voip-info.org/), but where do you even begin? Let's say you want to write a simple app that places an outbound call, says "Hello, world!" to the person on the end of the line, then hangs up--how do you get started? Googling the question will get you almost nowhere. Luckily, the first job I got out of college (with [Fonality](http://www.fonality.com/)), taught me the basics. Since then, I've grown accustom to the telephony world, but always felt a huge grudge against the system as a whole. Why does it have to be so inaccessible? Why aren't there companies working to solve these problems? Then I discovered [Twilio](http://www.twilio.com/) and [Tropo](https://www.tropo.com/home.jsp). In the offchance you don't know what either of those are--they're both excellent web companies that provide RESTful HTTP access to telephony, for programmers like you and me. Twilio and Tropo are gamechangers. They allow any developer to build high performance, scalable, and most importantly--simple telephony applications without knowing every detail about the telephony industry. Twilio and Tropo are taking telephony in the right direction. They're modernizing it. # What We Do As programmers ourselves, we have a deep passion for elegant APIs, and simple code. Since all of us have strong telephony backgrounds, we decided to team up to help modernize the telephony industry together. Our goal is simple: we want to simplify telephony, and make it more accessible for other programmers. To this end, we've built several awesome services (one of which we'll be launching in the next few days). This blog post is the first of many. Over the coming weeks, months, and years--you'll get to know us better. We plan to write about about projects, our company, and ourselves. In our journey to revolutionize the telephony world, we'll be keeping you informed. So, thanks for checking out our site. If you'd like to come along for the adventure, you should subscribe to our RSS feed. See you soon!