asterisk users - Nov 2004 - Need a creative solution - Caller ID and a stupid upstream

Ok. Our upstream provider, IDS Telecom, will not let us set outbound caller
ID to anything we want, like we used to be able to do with Expedius. We have
to provide them with a list of any numbers we want to be able to set
outbound caller ID to. So we have to give them a list of all our DID's, from
them, from Expedius, from VoicePulse, etc. etc. and it's quite tedius, but
we've been ok with it for now.

 

However, we use Cisco 79xx phones. If we use the "CFwdAll" option on
the
phone, to forward calls, the phone will see the incoming call and redirect
it to the call forwarded number, fine no problem. However, the phone (or
asterisk) tries to change the outbound caller ID to the callers caller ID,
this way the person receiving the call will know who's calling them.
However, IDS will not recognize this number and won't let us set our caller
ID to it so it will use the fall-back caller ID number, which is our
company's main number.

 

Just got a complaint from a customer who's upset that when he call forwards
to his cell phone, whenever a call comes into his cell phone (relayed
through their office phone), the caller ID shows our number, and not his
office number or the callers number.

 

If they picked up the phone, placed a call to their cell, the right caller
Id would be provided, as I have this set as their caller id in sip.conf
but only when the phone tries to do a blind transfer will it attempt to
change or alter its normal outbound caller id, which seems to override
what's in asterisk's sip.conf file.

 

Any ideas? All I've got so far is:

 

1.	Call IDS and tell them to make any "unknown" outbound caller id
numbers, just out of area. So when a call is forwarded through a Cisco,
their cell will say "Out of Area" instead of our main number
2.	Disable the "CFwdAll" option on the Cisco phones (I don't know
how
though)
3.	Get Asterisk to ignore the phone changing the caller id information
or override it

 

If anybody can help me accomplish option 2 or 3, or has a better solution,
it would be much appreciated.

 

Life was easier when we used Expedius, they didn't care what we set the
caller ID to. Too bad they lacked in too many other departments.

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