Phone Type Service

Spencer Smith

We have recently run the Phone Finder service from Blackbaud and have a bunch of updates but before I make any significant changes I thought it may be helpful to know which of our current phone types were mobile or landline. I think the Phone Finder service only identifies new landlines. We currently identify phone number types Home, Mobile, Business, etc...But, I think there may be a bunch of mobile numbers assigned to the Home or Business Type.


My question to the group, is there a service that you have used to identify if the phone number is a landline or mobile number on a big scale? I have found the one-off web sites but really need something to scan 5,000+ numbers.


Thanks for any feedback.

Stephanie Ulmer

I have the same problem in our database. We are considering using a vendor to append additional phone numbers and they will designate as home or mobile.

Spencer Smith

Stephanie Ulmer:

I have the same problem in our database. We are considering using a vendor to append additional phone numbers and they will designate as home or mobile.

Which vendor are you looking at to do the append?

Debra Holcomb

I created a phone type called "Phone Append" and don't worry about which type it is.  We run quarterly phone appends on a portion of our database to support our phone-a-thon program and it became to complicated to match the phone number to the type.  We overwrite this number if the append service returns something new.  The major gift officers will update home, cell, business, etc. as they need and we don't have to worry about overwriting something they have confirmed.  We may have a duplicate phone number with a home or business type and the phone append, but that hasn't been a problem.  It' s become much easier for everyone to leave the phone type unidentified.    

Spencer Smith

Thanks for your reply, Debra! I think your approach will be most helpful going forward instead of trying to determine whether the type is landline or mobile. Good suggestion!