Is there a free API or some other way to determine what carrier a cell phone number is registered with?
I’d like my application to broadcast text messages without them picking their carrier from a list.
UPDATE: Interestingly, a coworker found the answer: http://developer.whitepages.com/
UPDATE2: Well the whitepages license agreement is so restrictive that you can’t build an app for it. Any other ideas?
UPDATE3:
At some point, someone removed my Update 2. This puts it back. More importantly as of 10/19/2015 the Terms of Service is still in a state that it should be impossible to legally utilize their services.
You should note that the way to figure out which carrier a number belongs to will be country-specific (though, some countries might use the same scheme, but I’m not sure – I’ve worked with both the norwegian and swedish portability databases and they’re quite different api-wize – and require vpn + authentication).
The information is, at least here, not available to the public – I’ve seen service providers, network operators and information providers (as in yellow pages) that have access.
But otoh, wouldn’t a proper sms gateway service do this for you?