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This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 1:54 pm
by $skills=NULL
I somewhat doubt this can be done solely with PHP (maybe not at all), but it's bugging me so I want to know for sure. I don't want to place a phone call, exactly, but the first idea below is kind of like that.

My goal is to have a PHP form that will accept a mobile phone number, and return information regarding which carrier (AT&T, Sprint, etc) it belongs to. The options I've thought of are:

1) "Call" the mobile number, and retrieve some sort of bitstream that could maybe be parsed and searched for information. I'm fairly doubtful of this, since I'm not familiar with telephony and I doubt that it can work the same way as sending, for instance, an HTTP request to a server and getting a response.

2) Query some sort of service, like fonefinder, and retrieve the info. Also kinda doubtful about this, since I've found a couple of services like this and they have warnings about not accessing the service through a script.

3) Purchase a database of area codes and prefixes, and their associated carriers (and subscribe to periodic updates), put in MySQL format, and query it with the PHP form. I've Google searched and found commercial databases available with this sort of information, but it's always in a complete software package; a Windows program you install and run on your personal machine. I'd just need one huge SQL table I could put on my webhost. I know such databases exist, I just haven't been able to find any.


Any suggestions? :)

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:54 pm
by $skills=NULL
Anyone have an idea?

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:36 am
by $skills=NULL
:(

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:39 am
by Paul Arnold
I very much doubt anything like this is possible mate.

I do, however, like your username.

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:55 pm
by ehime
Sure its possible, there is a script running around somewhere that will have you give out your number
then before you can authorize the account it needs to send you an SMS message containing credentials.
Whether its in your/his/our abilities to do this?? lol

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:02 am
by Paul Arnold
Surely that would have to run through an SMS gateway though.

Plus, I don't think it's just confirmation that the number is correct that the OP's after.

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 8:14 am
by beagle804
It is almost impossible these days to track who is the carrier of record is for any phone number. Local Number Portability allows you to take any phone number in the North American Numbering Plan and move it to another carrier. You would be at the mercy of the subscriber services and frequency of their updates. Not to mention the problems they have at getting that information out of the carriers. None of the carriers want to tell you stats that show how much business they are losing to other carriers. If you could get that info, you'd be able to quantify the real world facts of best networks and best calling plans instead of listening to the company lines of "fastest 3G network" and "best 3G network".

For instance, I just plugged my cell phone number into fonefinder.net. It told me I was on Cingular. When I first got the number, I was with AT&T, who combined with Cingular. But before that change ever took place, I had already moved my number to Verizon and have been with Verizon for at least 5 years. That shows you how "up-to-date" the fonefinder.net database is!

Re: This may not be possible, but......"dialing" a mobile number

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:02 pm
by $skills=NULL
Paul Arnold wrote:I do, however, like your username.
A fine consolation prize. Thanks =D
beagle804 wrote:I had already moved my number to Verizon and have been with Verizon for at least 5 years. That shows you how "up-to-date" the fonefinder.net database is!
8O

Thanks for the input on this guys, I think I'll probably abandon this line of thinking and try to find another way to go.