Phantom Caller ID "Unavailable"

Old thread but here is what solved my issue.

I believe I have found the issue with my HR44/200 and Directv Caller ID that has plagued me for years. I have Ooma phone service but this may fix any phone service.

First caller ID would be intermittent, popping up or not popping up. A reboot of the HR44 would fix the issue for a few days, maybe. Also had the UNAVAILABLE caller ID pop up when on the phone. Caller ID always showed up on my cordless phones all the time as was correct. Ooma logs were filled with failed attempts to phone home to Directv. Like every 1.5 hours. I have hundreds of pages of these logged in the Ooma logs.

Here is what I found. Like most folks you have your Directv box close to your entertainment center. And like most folks you want to protect all this equipment with a good surge protector and/or UPS system. Well if you look you may find a phone jack in the surge or UPS equipment and like any good person want to protect your phone, so you plug your phone into that jack and then into the wall.

I need to get my FAX machine running so I took the phone line out of the Monster ($100) surge protector and plugged it into my printer/fax.

I now only had a short cable for the phone line so I just plugged the Directv box into the wall directly not using the surge protector.

Guess what? Yup, no more Ooma logs showing the Directv phone home number at all! Logs are clean!

So far no more UNAVAILABLE caller ID also!

I can only think that the voltage drop using the Monster phone jack surge protector was causing these issues.

That phone line has been connected for years like this but since Ooma is not connected to the outside world of POTS, it is not needed.

So there you have my fix. Make sure your Directv phone line is NOT connected to a surge or UPS phone protection jack. Plug it directly onto the wall jack.