Automatic Number Identification

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Automatic Number Identification (ANI) is a service in telephone networks that transmits the telephone number and various other parameters of the caller to users. ANI was developed by AT&T for the internal billing of long-distance calls. In the USA , the service is typically used by call centers with free numbers for the caller, Inward Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS). These are typically US numbers in the area code 800, 888, 877, 866, or 855.

Functionally, ANI is comparable to the Intelligent Network (IN) common in Europe .

The service does not take into account whether the caller wants to suppress his or her number using CLIR . Parameters of the caller, such as the phone number, from which network (landline or mobile network) and, if applicable, the location in the landline network, are determined and processed by the exchange on its side anyway.