The reason that firms withold their CLI is that we would get to know their geographical number, so we would then not ring their premium 0870 number!

Mike    Burgess Hill
With Geographical, 0800 and, for responding to 0870 merchants, an 0870 number.

saynonto0871 wrote on Feb 25^th, 2006 at 6:35pm:


In my opinion BT have been blocking incoming overseas CLIs in order to make cheaper Voip based call routing competitors look like they were delivering an inferior quality of service.

Having said that the universal withholding of overseas CLIs appears to be specific to the configuration of my exchange or my line as other people do appear to get a 441306xxxxxx CLI from time to time but I always get Overseas Withheld for all calls that present an International CLI, inlcluding calls from other 1899 subscribers.

Even though BT have tried to claim that they don't provide the CLI because they don't get the information they must know this is a lie and cannot be defended with Otelo and are perhaps now working on whatever aspects of their routing systems have been stripping out the overseas CLIs.

The thing is I distinctly remember someone calling me on the same BT landline using an Estonian mobile (they were in the UK at the time) 6 or 7 years ago and at that stage the Estonian mobile number's CLI was presented on my BT landline.  Sometime subsequently BT started stripping a large number of CLIs from calls entering the UK PSTN from overseas.

Tanllan wrote on Feb 25^th, 2006 at 8:36pm:


I feel confident no CLI will be shown on any of those networks when calling this phone number, unless of course BT have made software changes on my exchange following my complaint.

I already know what happens with my BT landline when calling it from a United Mobile (nee Riiing) SIM card (international and unavailable) so no need to try out that one.