Peter - I strongly suspect that you describe below a systematic problem with switch/NPAXXX mapping, as you indicate. The exact example you use may be a bit misleading as to the extent of those errors, though. Bear in mind that the DC area has some very strange things in their phone mapping, in particular, the Beltsville CO which you identify. There are facilities served out of the Beltsville CO which are, shall we say, "non-standard". The Arlington exchange you reference may be significantly farther away from the switch than is typical. The Beltsville CO may show some unusual mappings; I would suggest you don't use it as an indicator or test case given the number of technically complex government use cases in that area. The first (or second?) data T1 we had almost installed in our office in Beltsville was an interesting example, though not directly voice-related. The Bell Atlantic technician wired it up into our then- empty building, and asked "Is the tech at White Sands available to do an end-to-end test?" Since we were expecting a T1 to go about six miles down the road, this was a surprise. He looked at the expression on our faces, looked back at his paperwork, and said "Whoops. Let me get back to you in a few hours with YOUR circuit." Lastly: Your phrase of "inconsistently and automatedly get the data I need" is a truism for number-to-geography mapping these days. Ultimately, there is a growing lack of geographic association with numbers, and the relative value of doing that association is diminishing. For instance, I have no phone numbers associated with me on a common basis that mapped to a switch that is within 2000 miles of where I sit most often. While I am a phone geek, this is growing more common even with friends who are not in the telephony industry. Other than an increasingly inaccurate curiosity (pretty maps with lots of lines!) I don't see much use for geographic association in the future. JT On Sep 20, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Peter Beckman wrote:
In the past I've paid MelissaData.com $400 or so to get access to their NPANXX-Ratecenter-Location-GIS data. For each NPANXX, they list the Ratecenter, City and state/region, Lat/Lon coordinates. It's fairly accurate, though I'm not entirely sure how they get the data.
TelcoData.com doesn't keep City/State or Lat/Long coordinates of the NPANXX, only the switch that serves the block. The problem is that, for example in DC, Washington DC Zone 17 seems to be served from Beltsville, MD, but 571-269-3 is a Virginia, likely Arlington, exchange. So taking the switch location as the lat/lon for the npanxx block is very incorrect.
Cloudvox's API is awesome (Thanks Cloudvox!), but outside of Country, Region and Ratecenter, the city and location data from their API has been somewhat wrong. Examples:
http://digits.cloudvox.com/571/269/3 Ratecenter: WSNGTNZN17 VA City: WSNGTNZN08 (what?!?) Lat/Lon: 37.4315734, -78.6568942 (the center of Virginia, not even close to the DC area)
http://digits.cloudvox.com/805/316 Ratecenter: SNLUSOBSPO CA City: SANBARBARA (Not a valid city name) Lat/Lon: 36.778261, -119.4179324 (155 miles from San Luis Obispo, CA)
There are others, but I won't bore you. To give them credit, they have a "geo_precision" which I assume tells you how many significant digits you can trust, but is not mentioned in the API docs ( http://help.cloudvox.com/faqs/digits/digits-phone-number-location-lookup-api ) Plus it is limited to US only (recently addressed here or on asterisk-biz, may change).
LocalCallingGuide.com is a bit better at their lat/lon, but they don't include City name, they only offer XML and not JSON or another parseable format, and they don't list the ratecenter in the LERG 10 char format.
http://localcallingguide.com/xmlprefix.php?npa=571&nxx=269
I'm expecting WSNGTNZN17, not "Washington Zone 17" as the Ratecenter.
Between the TelcoData.com, three, I can inconsistently and automatedly get the data I need. I'd like to start offering a map of numbers available, but the map is only as good as the data behind it.
Is there another more accurate source that people use?
Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman at angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops