any way to "ping" a phone number?

Question

We have a customer who wants to go through their CRM database and somehow determine phone numbers which are valid, without actually having someone sit there and try calling them all.

Is there any way to do something akin to a "ping" on a phone number (including landlines)?

Answer 1

You will need to go through a third party. I have used Melissa data for address verification with good success, they also offer phone verification, but I have not used it

http://www.melissadata.com/listservices/resphoneverify.htm

If getting a 100% correct phone number is crucial, I'd look into a service which would actually call the number, give a verification code and make the user confirm that code with the site. It is a PIA from the users perspective, but that is the most complete route you can take. Doing a quick little googling came up with this site, http://www.phoneconfirm.com which seems to do what I mentioned. I am sure there are others though.

If you can't/don't want to go through a third party, I can't imagine writing something like this yourself would be impossible. Scaling it would be the biggest issue.

Answer 2

could always go with the good ole war dialer