We’ve had caller ID available to us for decades, and emails have names associated with them when sent, even when not in the receiver’s contact. I am wondering, why don’t text messages (SMS) have the same details communicated? It’s a phone number just like caller ID would be able to read.
In: Technology
SMS actually supports communicating sender name starting with 4G. Here is an example from [2010 specification](https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/124300_124399/124341/08.03.00_60/ts_124341v080300p.pdf) “Support of SMS over IP networks”:
P-Preferred-Identity: “John Doe” <sip:user1_public1 AT home1.net>
From: <sip:user1_public1 AT home1.net>; tag=171828
Content-Type: application/vnd.3gpp.sms
In case you are wondering where is the sender phone number, SMS over IP is based on Session Initiation Protocol that was designed for IP telephony so the example covers a general case. In mobile networks sender address is going be something like “sip:234150999999999 AT ims.mnc015.mcc234.3gppnetwork.org”.
As to why this option is not actively used there is no clear answer. It’s probably due to lack of interest in SMS improvements and concerns about fraud.
> emails have names associated with them when sent
Email “from” is easy to fake, even easier than it is to fake caller ID.
The email industry tries very hard and spends billions of dollars to fight email spam. For every scam email you see, there are 100 more that were filtered before they landed in your inbox.
Not all phone numbers have caller id names attached to them. This is carrier specific. If your carrier doesn’t support it it won’t show.
Also many cell phones don’t show caller id they just take the name from your address book if you have that number saved.
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