At Saphera, we use Unifi Talk as our office phone system. The phones are modern, sleek, and, being tech enthusiasts, we absolutely love exploring new gadgets. However, setting up the Unifi phone system to display a proper outgoing caller ID in Canada turned out to be more challenging than we expected.
Before diving into the setup, it’s important to understand the difference between locked and unlocked phones – a detail that caused us some confusion along the way. Unifi sells two types of phones: locked and unlocked. Locked phones are designed to work exclusively with Unifi’s phone service. You buy a locked phone, sign up for a Unifi monthly subscription, and you’re all set. Your phone is ready to go. Unlocked phones, on the other hand, can be used with external services. So if you ever decide that the Unifi Talk service isn’t for you and want to use an external SIP, you can do so with an unlocked phone. With a locked phone – well, it’s Unifi or nothing.
While locked phones are more affordable upfront, unlocked ones can save you money in the long run since you can pair them with third-party SIP services like voip.ms, which charges just pennies per month.
Luckily, when it comes to setting up a caller ID, the type of phone you select is irrelevant. Both locked and unlocked versions will work with Unifi Talk’s caller ID when setting it up in Canada.
I won’t delve too deeply into the phone setup, but I do want to highlight that Unifi does a great job with their Talk system. Just remember that each phone making outside calls needs its own talk subscription (its own number). However, you can set up multiple phones to share a single number or subscription, similar to how a home phone system works with multiple handsets sharing one line. This can be done by creating a Group in the Unifi Talk application, assigning it a phone number, and then adding users to the group. When a call comes in, all the phones in the group ring, and the first person to pick up gets the call.
Whether you get your phone number from Unifi or use a third-party SIP, you’ll likely run into the same issue with outgoing caller ID. When you make a call, it might show up as “Unknown Number” or, worse, “Likely Fraud” on the recipient’s end. This is mainly because VOIP numbers are frequently reassigned, sometimes used by temporary services or even spammers.
In the U.S., Unifi offers a business service that allows caller IDs to be set directly from the Unifi Portal (according to their tech support). Unfortunately, this isn’t available in Canada. When we reached out to Unifi support, they simply informed us that this feature isn’t supported here and that they’d notify us when it becomes available.
The number we were testing with Unifi Talk was new, and, unfortunately, it was showing up as “Likely Fraud.” Determined not to give up, we started by identifying the carrier of the number. However, we hit a dead end with Unifi’s carrier, Iristel.com. Their tech support never answered, and they didn’t respond to our messages. So, we turned to Primus, a company we’ve worked with on several occasions when developing custom software. Their tech support is some of the best I’ve personally ever encountered. As always, they took the time to explain how CNAMEs work, who manages the databases in Canada, and who we should reach out to.
Thanks to the Primus tech team, we were directed to Hiya. It turns out they manage most CNAME or Caller ID databases in Canada, and they also offer phone identity services for businesses. The process was straightforward but did require some patience. Here’s what we did:
That’s it! Setting up a caller ID for a Canadian Unifi Talk system may take a few days, but soon, that “Likely Fraud” number will properly display your business name and phone number.
Hiya offers a paid service called Hiya Connect, which is a more advanced system for managing caller IDs based on departments and different phone numbers. When browsing their site, it might seem like you need this to simply set your caller ID, but this is an additional service beyond the basic caller ID setup. If you’re just looking to link a caller ID with a simple phone number, the steps above are all you need. The page to this service seems to change often so I won’t link it here however it should be an easy find.
Another helpful service from Hiya is their status clearing service, which is great for clearing existing records on a new phone number you’ve acquired. For instance, if you bought a new phone number from Unifi and it’s showing up as “Likely Fraud,” you’ll need to clear it from any blacklists it may have landed on. To do this, visit Hiya’s page and request to have all previous CNAME settings removed from the phone number.
Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored, nor do we have any affiliations with the businesses mentioned. This is simply an account of our own experience in setting up our phone system, and we wanted to share the lessons we learned along the way.