[brains, sorta]

[wispfox]

It is, in fact, a fairly major mental shift to be at work, have one's cell (mobile!) ring, appear to be a US number, and be australian_joe.

My brain hasn't quite managed to recover from that yet. :) (I mean, phone call was a good thing, but... sudden dramatic mental shift!)

Ow. My brain hurts.

Still. Now I'm all chipper. :)

Comments

[uberjay.livejournal.com]

So, is he in the US, or is there some other trickery going on to change the caller-id?

[bridgetester.livejournal.com]

murfle? *also curious*

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

It's the way the telcos in both countries hand off international calls to each other.

I am guessing but do not know for sure that it works like this:

My telco says, ah, an international call to the US, and connects to a US telco. "I have a call for someone in your country. I don't understand how your system works. Will you take care of it for me? Just place the call for me and we'll pipe my part into that."

Sometimes the US provider correctly recognises that the origin of the call (for purposes of caller ID as displayed to the American phone) is a number in Australia), and displays that number.

Sometimes it deems the caller to be my Australian telco rather than me, and so displays *their* caller ID - which is "Unknown". Or perhaps it recognises that the call originated outside the US, with the same result.

Sometimes the "caller" is deemed to be the last link in the chain, ie. the US telco handling the US side of things, and displays *their* caller ID - which is a domestic US number.

There doesn't seem to be any pattern over which way it ends up.

I note with interest that when I'm in the US and calling from my Australian number via global roaming, it *always* displays my caller ID correctly. So I'm guessing it's the handover between the two domestic systems that's the issue.