Caller ID looks like one feature but is two separate systems. The number travels with the call itself, asserted by the originating side and now cryptographically checked via STIR/SHAKEN. The name, those 15 characters like "CANNON VOIP", does not travel with the call at all in most of the US. The receiving carrier looks it up.
How the name lookup (CNAM) works
When a call arrives, the terminating carrier queries a CNAM database with the calling number and displays whatever comes back, and here is the catch: there is no single database. Multiple commercial CNAM providers exist, carriers choose which to query and how often to refresh cached answers, and some skip lookups to save the per-query fee. Your number's name record might be correct in one database, stale in another, and never consulted by a third. That fragmentation, not malice, is why your company name displays perfectly on one carrier and shows a previous owner's name, a city name, or nothing on another.
Why wrong names happen, specifically
- Stale records: the number's previous owner's name is cached somewhere with a slow refresh cycle.
- No record: nothing was registered, so carriers display city/state derived from the area code.
- Cache lag: you updated the name, but a carrier's cached copy has weeks left to live.
- Mobile phones: the biggest twist. Cell carriers largely ignore CNAM and display what their apps decide: the recipient's contacts, crowd-sourced labels, or "Spam Likely" from analytics engines. Your CNAM record can be perfect and irrelevant on mobile.
Getting your name right
Register your CNAM record through your provider and keep it consistent (15 characters, so choose the abbreviation deliberately). Then address the mobile world separately: register your numbers and business name with the major carriers' business registries and analytics providers, and keep calling patterns clean so reputation engines have nothing to flag; the attestation guide has a checklist. For the strongest presentation, branded calling programs put a verified display name and logo on mobile screens by prior arrangement with carriers, replacing the CNAM guessing game on the calls where answer rates matter most.
Diagnosis shortcut: if your name is wrong only on mobiles, it is a reputation/registry issue, not CNAM. If it is wrong on landlines too, fix the CNAM record and wait out the caches.
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