Blog

The DIDHub Blog

Deep dives into the telephony stack: Microsoft Teams Phone, AI voice agents, STIR/SHAKEN, EU EEA calling rates, regulatory regimes, and the messy reality of running global voice in 2026.

Branded Calling Explained: Logo & Verified Name on Caller ID

2026-05-31 · 13 min read · Trust & identity

CNAM was the answer when caller ID meant 15 ASCII characters in a 1990s database. Today the recipient’s phone can show your logo, verified business name, and the reason for the call before the user decides whether to answer. The full picture of the four-vendor branded-calling ecosystem (Hiya, First Orion, TNS, Google), how Rich Call Data underpins it, what shows on the handset, coverage by carrier, pricing, and how to actually get registered.

Read more →

DID Number Provider: What a DID Is, How It Works & How to Pick One

2026-05-31 · 14 min read · Fundamentals

The long-form pillar guide to DID number providers. What a DID actually is and why the term survived from 1960s telecom, the full step-by-step flow from caller to your servers, why multiple concurrent calls on one DID is normal (channels vs DIDs), the five types you will encounter, pricing models, compliance and porting timelines, and a 10-point checklist for picking a provider that will not lock you in.

Read more →

SIP SRV Records Explained: How SIP Engines Decide Where to Send Your INVITE

2026-05-31 · 12 min read · DNS & SIP discovery

Every SIP trunk eventually faces the same question: how does your PBX actually know which server to send an INVITE or REGISTER to? The real answer is the three-stage RFC 3263 lookup, NAPTR → SRV → A, and the SRV record is the piece that lets one carrier hostname route across POPs, balance load by weight, and fail over without a single PBX edit. Full picture: how SIP applies SRV, INVITE vs REGISTER behaviour, why SRV beats hard-coded host:port, which stacks honour it, and six common gotchas.

Read more →

Number Porting Explained: LOA, Timelines & What Goes Wrong

2026-05-26 · 9 min read · Porting

Porting is a regulated handshake between the losing and gaining carrier, and it fails on mismatched details far more than anything structural. We cover the LOA, the FOC date, realistic timelines by number type, and the rejection reasons, account-number mismatch, CSR/address mismatch, wrong PIN, that drag a two-day port out to two weeks.

Read more →

A2P 10DLC Registration: Getting Your US SMS Delivered

2026-05-26 · 9 min read · US messaging

Since 2021 US carriers filter unregistered A2P traffic on local numbers to near-zero. We explain the two-step brand + campaign registration through The Campaign Registry, how trust score drives throughput, the layered fees, TCPA consent, and how 10DLC compares to toll-free SMS and short codes.

Read more →

WebRTC & Browser Calling: Voice Without a Desk Phone

2026-05-26 · 9 min read · WebRTC

Real calls from a browser tab are table stakes for support tools, diallers, and AI voice agents. We unpack what WebRTC is (media, not signaling), getUserMedia and ICE/STUN/TURN, why TURN costs real bandwidth, and the WebRTC-to-SIP gateway that bridges a browser to the PSTN.

Read more →

Provisioning Phone Numbers at Scale: Pools, Rotation & Automation

2026-05-26 · 9 min read · Scale

Buying one number is a click; provisioning thousands across dozens of countries is an ops problem. We cover the provisioning lifecycle, number pools for regulated markets, DID rotation for outbound, idempotent bulk ordering with partial-failure handling, and compliance prepared ahead of demand.

Read more →

CNAM & Caller ID: Why Your Business Name Doesn’t Show

2026-05-26 · 8 min read · Caller ID

In North America you don’t send your caller ID name, the receiving carrier looks it up via a CNAM dip. We explain why your business name doesn’t show, the 24–72h propagation and 15-char limit, why mobile is a different (analytics + branded-calling) world, and CNAM vs STIR/SHAKEN.

Read more →

Voice Codecs Explained: G.711, G.722, Opus & What’s Next

2026-05-26 · 10 min read · Voice quality

The codec decides call quality, bandwidth, and whether two endpoints can talk without transcoding. We compare G.711, G.722, G.729, Opus, iLBC, AMR-WB and EVS, bitrates, royalties, the “HD voice” myth, the hidden transcoding tax, plus what’s deprecated (Speex, GSM) and the neural codecs coming next.

Read more →

Building Integrations on DIDHub: OAuth 2.0 for Third-Party Apps

2026-05-26 · 9 min read · Developers

If your users sign in with their own DIDHub account, API keys are the wrong tool. A developer walkthrough of DIDHub’s OAuth 2.0 authorization server: Authorization Code + PKCE, registering an app, the token exchange, refresh-token rotation with replay detection, and the scope model.

Read more →

Why International Phone Numbers Need KYC: Compliance Bundles Explained

2026-05-26 · 8 min read · Compliance

Ordered a German or Italian number and it’s stuck in “pending documents”? Most countries legally require proof of identity and a local address before a number goes live. We explain why, what you’ll be asked for, the strictness tiers by country, and how DIDHub’s Compliance Center activates the number.

Read more →

SIP Trunk Failover That Actually Works

2026-05-26 · 9 min read · Architecture

A single SIP trunk is a single point of failure. We cover how dead peers are detected (OPTIONS pings, SRV, response-code semantics), which SIP codes mean “try next” vs “final answer,” the four routing strategies (failover, round-robin, weighted, sim-ring), and multi-PoP redundancy.

Read more →

Microsoft Teams SBC-as-a-Service: TLS, FQDN, DNS & Auto-Failover Explained

2026-05-14 · 11 min read · Microsoft Teams

The Session Border Controller is the most painful part of a Teams Phone rollout: certificates, FQDNs, DNS, redundancy, and patching. SBC-as-a-Service collapses all of it into a one-line PowerShell command. We unpack what an SBC actually does, how DIDHub automates TLS certificate lifecycle for customer-owned FQDNs (sbc.company.com), the multi-PoP failover architecture, and the 5 PowerShell commands to get Teams calling through it.

Read more →

Microsoft Teams Phone, Direct Routing vs Calling Plans for SMBs

2026-04-26 · 9 min read · Microsoft Teams

Teams Phone is the calling capability inside Microsoft 365. The licensing tier you're on (E5 vs E3+add-on) decides what's bundled, but the bigger question is how you actually place calls: pay Microsoft per-user for Calling Plans, or bring your own SIP carrier via Direct Routing. We compare both for a typical 50-user SMB and explain when each makes sense.

Read more →

AI Voice Agents Need Real Phone Numbers

2026-04-26 · 7 min read · AI / Voice

Vapi, Retell AI, ElevenLabs Conversational AI, Bland, Synthflow, LiveKit Agents, the AI voice platforms all have one thing in common: they need real phone numbers, with real STIR/SHAKEN attestation, real low-latency interconnects, and the ability to scale without per-DID lock-in. We unpack the DID strategy that actually works.

Read more →

STIR/SHAKEN Explained: Why Your US Calls Are Going to Spam

2026-04-26 · 8 min read · US compliance

If your US outbound calls are getting flagged as “Spam Likely” or “Scam Likely,” the cause is almost always STIR/SHAKEN attestation. We explain attestation A vs B vs C, why most resold SIP trunking is stuck at B-attestation, and what it takes to get to A.

Read more →

Origin Based Rating (OBR): How Local DIDs Save 30-100×

2026-04-26 · 6 min read · OBR / EEA

The industry term is Origin Based Rating, per-minute outbound rates depend on where the calling DID lives, not just where the call lands. Calling Spain from a German DID costs $0.019/min; the same destination from a US DID costs $0.96/min. We explain how OBR works, why retail VoIP providers don't pass the savings through, and how to architect for it.

Read more →

What we write about

The DIDHub blog focuses on the operational realities of running global voice and AI-driven communications: regulatory regimes that change pricing by 50×, integration patterns for Microsoft Teams / Zoom Phone / 3CX / FreePBX / AI agents, real STIR/SHAKEN data, port-in case studies, and the boring but expensive failure modes (call quality, codec mismatch, BYOC misconfiguration) that actually decide whether your VoIP rollout works.

If you have a topic you'd like covered, write to [email protected].

More from the blog

Ready to get a number?

Pick a DID in 130+ countries from $1.99/month. Activates instantly on most numbers.