1.Phone Object Concepts

          1.1 What are the different phone types that Phone Object can identify?

Phone numbers that verify at the 7-digit level can be identified as follows:

Cell
LandLine
Voice Over IP

Additionaly, if a Phone Number is verified at the 10-digit level, it can also identify the phone number as follows:

Residential
Business
Small Office / Home Office

1.2 How does Phone Object verify whether a number is a cell phone or landline?

We identify cell phones solely by line range using LERG data. The LERG (or Local Exchange Routing Guide) contains information on how to connect calls through the North American telephone switching network. Part of the LERG data is advisory information from the various telephone companies. It relates to how the Telco who owns that line range is currently using those numbers, including whether or not they are using them for provisioning new cell phones.

We rely on this information to tag phone numbers as cell phones. This is a good, but not foolproof method for tagging numbers as cell phones. Due to things like local number porting, individual phone numbers may differ in usage from the other phones in their line range. For example, a phone number that is in a range currently being provisioned to land lines may have been ported over to a cell phone.