FAQs#

Accuracy#

How accurate is Global Phone at identifying disconnected and invalid numbers?#

Global Phone is 90% accurate when identifying disconnected and invalid numbers.

Coverage#

What countries does Global Phone cover?#

For CallerID, Global Phone covers all countries except Israel.

For details on premium coverage, see the following sections:

Validation#

How does Global Phone validation work?#

Global Phone uses proprietary technology that includes live Telco network data, phone switch signaling data, and years of research and development to validate phone numbers.

Reliability#

How reliable is the coverage for premium?#

For CallerID, a new field is added onto the response that returns the name associated with the phone, if available.

For Premium, no new fields are added; instead, relevant fields are updated with up-to-date information from the live check.

  • Result codes can change, allowing PS17 (live phone number) and PS22 (high confidence) to appear

  • The phone type indicated in the result codes (PS07, PS08) may change as well

  • Carrier may be updated to reflect latest changes

Please do note that since coverage is on a carrier to carrier basis, some carriers may stop supporting coverage for our premium services, and thus certain countries or carriers of countries can stop returning results.

Premium Features#

How does Premium and CallerID impact the results, compared to Express?#

CallerID - A new field is added onto the response that returns the name associated with the phone, if available.

Premium - No new fields are added; instead, relevant fields are updated with up-to-date information from the live check.

  • Result codes can change, allowing PS17 (live phone number) and PS22 (high confidence) to appear

  • The phone type indicated in the result codes (PS07, PS08) may change as well

  • Carrier may be updated to reflect latest changes

Latitude/Longitude#

What Exactly do the Latitude/Longitude fields designate to?#

The coordinates from a phone response gives a general area of where the phone had originated from.

For example, if a phone was registered and activated in New York, but the recipient is currently in Pennsylvania, then the coordinates would show the New York area.

The coordinates do not correspond to a cellphone’s current location or the exact coordinates of a store the phone was activated in. The coordinates do not change with premium mode, but may be updated with our updates to the service.

“XV” or “XG” Abbreviations#

Why is the response giving me a country abbreviation called “XV” or “XG”?#

Deprecated since version v4.0.0.25: These country codes have been deprecated and no longer show in the latest version! 4.0.0.25 Build History.

The International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, assigns each country a two letter code, known as the alpha-2 codes. For example, the United States ISO 3166 Alpha-2 code is US. Canada is CA. Germany is DE. This is what fills the CountryAbbreviation response for our Global Phone service.

Their prominent use is for top level domains (.us, .uk, .de), but these codes are not always assigned on a country-to-country basis. Organizations can use an ISO3166 Alpha-2 code; for example, the European Patent Organization, uses the alpha-2 code EP (1).

In this case, alpha-2 code XV, falls under “User-assigned code elements” from codes XA to XZ, QM-QZ, and AA. For these assignments, Countries or organizations can request to use these codes for their own use; for example, the Unicode CLDR project took QO to represent Oceania (2).

For XV in particular, it is in use for a code representing multiple countries. Example uses:

  • BaFin (German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) used XV for defining assets found in multiple countries.

  • ITU (Internation Telecommunications Union) assigned country dialing codes +882 and +883 to the alpha-2 code XV, to represent services that are not dedicated for a single country (3).

XG is part of the User Assigned Code Elements in the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 standard - similar to XV.

Also similar to XV (+882/+883), XG (+881) covers multiple countries but the difference is that the service is used for satellite systems.

Here are some resources to learn more about ISO 3166’s Alpha-2 standards:

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Codes_currently_agreed_not_to_use

  2. https://www.drupal.org/node/1157504

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Networks_(country_code)

Valid Inputs#

What are the valid inputs for the Global Phone’s Lookup method?#

The Lookup method can take in a phone number, a country name or ISO2 code, and a country of origin’s name or ISO2 code.

The phone number can be inserted in the local or international format.

The phone country and the country of origin can take in the official country name or the ISO2 code for that region.

Territory Name

Territory’s ISO2 Code

Country it falls in

Reassigned ISO2

Åland Islands

AX

Finland

FI

Bouvet Island

BV

Norway

NO

Cocos (Keeling) Islands

CC

Australia

AU

Christmas Island

CX

Australia

AU

Western Sahara

EH

Morocco

MA

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

GS

Great Britian / United Kingdom

GB

Heard Island and McDonald Islands

HM

Australia

AU

Pitcairn

PN

Great Britian / United Kingdom

GB

Svalbard and Jan Mayen

SJ

Norway

NO

French Southern Territories

TF

FR

FR

United States Minor Outlying Islands

UM

United States

US

Vatican City / Holy See

VA

Italy

IT

Service Speed#

What are the speeds of the Global Phone Web Service?#

The following are the average speeds of Global Phone (per record) depending on what options are enabled:

Action

Throughput (Average)

Express Mode (Only)

100ms

Premium Mode (Only)

500-1000ms

CNAM (CallerID)

300-600ms

Premium Mode + CNAM

1000-2000ms

Cached Data

<200ms

Result Code Examples#

What are some examples of input that returns specific codes?#

Code

Short Description

Example Input

PS - Phone Status

PS01

Valid Phone

949 - 589 - 5200

PS08

Land Line

949 - 589 - 5200

PE - Phone Error

PE01

Invalid Phone

411-777-8000

PE02

Blank Phone

(___)___ - ____

PE03

Bad Phone

949-589

PE05

Bad Prefix/Prefix +1

909-698-8988