CNAM stands for Caller ID Name. CNAM is a feature in the United States public telephone network that identifies an incoming caller by a personal or business name associated with the originating phone number. CNAM is registered by the EndUser assigned the phone number through their Telephony Service Provider (Twilio).
CNAM lookups are fully supported for Twilio phone numbers registered in the United States. Additionally, your profile must be associated with a registration authority, specifically an EIN (Employer Identification Number) or a DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) number. CNAM lookups are not available for phone numbers from other countries, including Canada.
There are two different options for enabling CNAM on your phone number(s):
Please note CNAM:
Note: At this time, you are unable to update Toll-Free numbers CNAM via the Twilio Console or API. To update the CNAM on a Toll-Free number, please contact support.
Create a Business Profile in the Console's Trust Hub and submit for vetting.
Assign phone numbers in your account to the Business Profile.
Select phone numbers for CNAM Registration.
Click Save
NOTE: You can remove CNAM by unassigning Phone Number from CNAM Trust Product or by deleting the CNAM Trust Product.
That's it. No coding required.
Please refer to Trust Hub Rest API Docs for more details.
You'll need your Phone Number SID(s)
ChannelEndpointType
. It needs to be
phone-number
to add a phone number to your Business Profile.
policy_sid
from the example below. This is a static value that will stay the same across all accounts.
You'll need your Business Profile's SID.
Type
. It needs to be
cnam_information
to create the proper CNAM End User resource.
You will also need the CNAM Trust Product SID, returned from the API call in Step 3
ChannelEndpointType
Learn more about Business Profiles and other Trust Products in the Trust Hub Docs.
After your CNAM Trust Product reaches "Twilio-Approved", the display name may take 48-72 hours to propagate to all carriers in the United States.
Please note a CNAM display name only appears on devices if enabled by the subscriber and is dependent on the terminating carrier to display the proper registered CNAM.
For landlines, CNAM is always enabled by default.
For mobile devices most commonly, US Carriers require the subscriber to opt-in. If the recipient does not have the CNAM feature or app enabled on their phone no CNAM will display even if a CNAM is properly set for number.
A specific carrier may have outdated CNAM information. For the CNAM to be displayed accurately, the recipient's carrier must query the CNAM databases (LIDB) and update their records. If a carrier has not recently performed a query it may cause the recipient to see outdated CNAM information for the number.