Caller ID shows "Unknown"

I'm using an iPhone 6, with the latest software 8.1.2. My carrier is AT&T. I never had this issue up until about 2 weeks ago. Every now and then the caller ID shows "Unknown" when I receive a call. Sometimes even if they are in my contacts list, but not always. Before it didn't matter if they were in my contacts or not it would still display the 10 digit phone number. I called AT&T after reading on here it's on the carrier's end of things. The agent checked all my settings on my account on AT&T's end and said everything looks good, but he did ping my phone. I checked it by messeging a couple of my contacts and had them call me and their ID's came up, but they are using cell phones, I just tried from by business land line and "Unknown" showed, so did Unknown show from my Mother's land line, it seems that any land lines are not showing up on caller ID, even before if they weren't in my contacts the number would still show up.

Posted on Jan 5, 2015 12:41 PM

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29 replies

Jan 5, 2015 1:04 PM in response to Housedoctor

The outgoing caller (not the person being called) determines if their ID is shown. From a land line in the U.S., even if you generally have your outgoing caller ID visible, you can precede the number you're calling with *67 and hide your caller ID for this next outgoing call.


Whether the person calling you is in your contacts list or not has absolutely no effect on whether you see "Unknown" when someone calls you. If the caller has elected to display their ID when calling:


  • If they are in your contacts list, you will see their name.
  • If not, you will see their phone number.


But in either case, you will see "Unknown" if they block their caller ID from being displayed when calling.

Jan 5, 2015 1:38 PM in response to Housedoctor

Thanks for the reply sberman, but my Mother doesn't block her outgoing calls I had her call me came in Unknown, I tried my cell from my business land line in my home office to my cell it came in as Unknown, I tried my home land line to cell it came in Unknown, it seems for some reason it's not showing "Land Lines", even had the local lumberyard call me from their land line came in Unknown.

Jan 5, 2015 1:41 PM in response to Housedoctor

This is something that is happening for the new VoLTE services that AT&T and Verizon are trying to use. They are still in the test mode, and are not working well. Go into Settings>Cellular and turn off LTE for voice. Instead of Voice & Data, set it for Data only. It seems that this Caller ID issue is one of the problems they are witnessing. Just turn that to Data only, power the phone off/on, and then test. It should work after that.

Jan 5, 2015 1:46 PM in response to Housedoctor

There's another long thread on this subject. So you don't have to read 20 pages of it, here's a summary of the cause: Basically, it is a bug in how carriers manage Voice over LTE (VoLTE), which is the default for the iPhone 6. That is, instead of voice being a separate audio channel at the carrier's towers, voice is digitized and sent to the phone as data use LTE. The phone converts it back to audio. The problem occurs only with calls from VoIP phones, such as office PBXes and cable phone service. And only some of them. It's an incompatibility between the was VoIP service sends calling line ID and what the network expects. Both AT&T and Verizon have said they are working on fixing it, but haven't given a timetable. The current workaround is to call the carrier, ask to be escalated to a Level 2 tech, and say you want to have VoLTE disabled for your account at the carrier. It is not sufficient to just turn it off on your phone.

Jan 5, 2015 2:11 PM in response to Housedoctor

That is exactly what the problem is. As I said, and Lawrence echoed, you can turn off the voice & data on your phone and it should correct it. It will not really make any difference to you, since the GSM phone from AT&T already has the ability to do voice and data together anyway. Only Verizon customers are still inconvenienced with no voice and data at the same time.


You can let Charter know about it, in case other customers call them with questions, however there is nothing they can do on their end. It is not their issue to fix.

Jan 5, 2015 4:16 PM in response to KiltedTim

From the technical analysis in the other thread, it's really a problem on both sides. Some VoIP providers work. For example, I have Optimum (Cablevision) and I get caller ID from my Optimum VoIP number to my mobile. It seems there was an update to the caller ID spec, but not all providers updated their systems to match the new spec. The ones least likely to are private exchanges, like your doctor or other businesses. Meanwhile, the cell carriers assumed that everyone had updated, a bad assumption. My guess is that Charter is one that did not. So AT&T & Verizon may have to make their systems backwards compatible, but they would prefer not to, so they may be dragging their feet.

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Caller ID shows "Unknown"

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