How to Get the Most Out of Number Lookup
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 4:02 am
Lookup API
Phone Numbers
How to Get the Most Out of Number Lookup
If you’re planning a high-volume marketing campaign, you can chinese overseas europe data save money by ensuring that the numbers you’re trying to reach are active and able to receive text messages. Number lookup can uncover deactivated numbers, landline numbers, and mobile numbers that can’t receive SMS.
Plivo introduced the Lookup API in 2020 to allow customers to programmatically determine information for any phone number worldwide. The Lookup API can also properly format numbers for use with our other APIs; improperly formatted numbers can cause calls and messages to fail. Number lookups also make economic sense in many regions, where the cost of a number lookup is less than the cost of sending a text.
What is number lookup?
You might be familiar with number lookup in the context of a reverse directory lookup, where, instead of finding a phone number for a name, you use the phone number to find out details about the person or business using it.
In the context of Plivo APIs, the Lookup API returns the phone number country, the number format, its carrier, and its type: fixed (landline), mobile, VoIP, or toll-free. Type is especially useful, as most landline numbers and many VoIP and toll-free numbers can’t accept SMS messages. CPaaS platforms charge a fraction of a cent for every message sent, whether a number can accept SMS or not, so it’s worthwhile to eliminate invalid numbers from your target list.
For mobile numbers, the Lookup API relies on the Home Location Register, a global database that contains information about authorized subscribers to GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) networks. Fields returned include the mobile country code (MCC), mobile network code (MNC), and carrier name. These values map to fields of a unique ID for all mobiles phones — an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), which is associated with the SIM in the phone. The first three digits of the IMSI represent the MCC. The next two or three numbers represent the MNC. The remaining digits represent the Mobile Subscription Identification Number (MSIN) within the mobile operator’s customer base, a unique number that the carrier uses to identify a user’s mobile phone number.
Though it sounds as if the MSIN should be a subscriber’s mobile phone number, it’s not necessarily. When a subscriber changes their phone number, for example, they keep their original MSIN.
Phone Numbers
How to Get the Most Out of Number Lookup
If you’re planning a high-volume marketing campaign, you can chinese overseas europe data save money by ensuring that the numbers you’re trying to reach are active and able to receive text messages. Number lookup can uncover deactivated numbers, landline numbers, and mobile numbers that can’t receive SMS.
Plivo introduced the Lookup API in 2020 to allow customers to programmatically determine information for any phone number worldwide. The Lookup API can also properly format numbers for use with our other APIs; improperly formatted numbers can cause calls and messages to fail. Number lookups also make economic sense in many regions, where the cost of a number lookup is less than the cost of sending a text.
What is number lookup?
You might be familiar with number lookup in the context of a reverse directory lookup, where, instead of finding a phone number for a name, you use the phone number to find out details about the person or business using it.
In the context of Plivo APIs, the Lookup API returns the phone number country, the number format, its carrier, and its type: fixed (landline), mobile, VoIP, or toll-free. Type is especially useful, as most landline numbers and many VoIP and toll-free numbers can’t accept SMS messages. CPaaS platforms charge a fraction of a cent for every message sent, whether a number can accept SMS or not, so it’s worthwhile to eliminate invalid numbers from your target list.
For mobile numbers, the Lookup API relies on the Home Location Register, a global database that contains information about authorized subscribers to GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) networks. Fields returned include the mobile country code (MCC), mobile network code (MNC), and carrier name. These values map to fields of a unique ID for all mobiles phones — an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), which is associated with the SIM in the phone. The first three digits of the IMSI represent the MCC. The next two or three numbers represent the MNC. The remaining digits represent the Mobile Subscription Identification Number (MSIN) within the mobile operator’s customer base, a unique number that the carrier uses to identify a user’s mobile phone number.
Though it sounds as if the MSIN should be a subscriber’s mobile phone number, it’s not necessarily. When a subscriber changes their phone number, for example, they keep their original MSIN.