Calling Name Presentation

There are plenty of mobile subscriber services available to the end user already but wondering why most of these are not really used by anyone and some of them are not even known by end users. There are some exceptions like the Selective Ring Back Tone which conquered quite big audience in the recent past. If you are interested what mobile network feature will be the big hit of the next few years you definitely have to read this article.

As you probably already know it from the About page of from my CV, I’m currently working in the telecommunication industry. This topic is very far from my domain of interest if we view it very strictly, however, I managed to find the perfect thing what caught my attention during the last one and half year.

The problem with telecom software development is that you usually implement very specific network related functionalities that are not directly visible to the end user. This makes the whole development process a bit too abstract for me as I like much more practical things. Of course, these internals also have their important purpose, however, it is not the same thing as something you can see and play with on your mobile phone.

Fortunately I had luck and joined the company right before a very great service needed to be implemented. Yes, this is calling name presentation (CNAP for short). As the standard says: “Calling Name Presentation (CNAP) provides the name identification of the calling party (e.g., personal name, company name, “restricted”, “not available”) to the called subscriber”. This means in practice that when somebody calls you your phone will receive not just the number of the callee but also her name information if such is available. More specifically if somebody calls you, you can see her name even if she’s number is not in the contact list stored in your mobile device (note that the image on the left is just an illustration).

This information is got from a database which stores names associated with phone numbers. In real life one probably tells the desired name for herself when making the subscription contract, using some nasty SMS code or using some customer service line. Of course this is just what the standard tells but the actual implementation is much more comprehensive and it is improved all the time with additional features.

We developed the first version of the feature not much after I’ve joined the company with my then manager being the design architect of the feature from implementation point of view. Later he was promoted and left the development line so somebody had to take his place as the responsible of the feature. Fortunately at that time I was one of those who knew the implementation the most so I had the luck to take his place.

It quickly became obvious that CNAP will be a very popular service in the near future so we put huge efforts in promoting and improving it. Since that we made a much more refined version of CNAP and we continuously improve it and I really like that I have great effect on how the functionality evolves over time. I am really proud that I could take key position in developing such a robust new technology and I hope the great audience will like it.