Quick answer: Rich Call Data (RCD) — marketed as "branded calling" — lets a verified business put its name, logo, and reason for calling on the recipient's phone screen instead of a bare number or a generic CNAM label. RCD is the ATIS-1000095 standard that carries that display payload inside the call's signed PASSporT, so it rides on the same STIR/SHAKEN attestation chain the terminating carrier already checks — it does not replace attestation. On Devotel Orbit, branded calling is configured per organization (display name, logo, reason for calling), submitted for per-carrier provisioning (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile), and can be overridden per DID; unverified senders fall back to plain CNAM or raw digits.
This is the industry-news explainer pair to the existing STIR/SHAKEN attestation walkthrough. If caller identity is on your outbound-voice checklist, the two posts together cover the full stack: attestation proves the number; RCD names and brands it.
What branded calling actually is
When your outbound call rings, the recipient's phone has to decide what to show. Today it has three options, and buyers routinely conflate them:
- [CNAM](/glossary/cnam) — a database lookup the terminating carrier runs against a registry your number was separately registered with. It resolves digits to one static display name, nothing more, and it depends on which CNAM database that specific carrier queries.
- [STIR/SHAKEN attestation](/glossary/stir-shaken) — a cryptographic signed claim about how deeply the originating provider verified the caller. It proves who is calling, but renders no brand.
- [Rich Call Data (RCD)](/glossary/rich-call-data) — a signed display payload — display name, logo, and an optional reason for calling ("Your delivery is arriving", "Your 2pm appointment") — carried inside the call's PASSporT where a supporting carrier renders it on the incoming-call screen.
Branded calling is the marketing name for an RCD deployment. "Branded caller ID" (BCID) is the same thing in buyer vocabulary. The visible result: your brand name and logo on the screen instead of "Unknown" — and on a call that declares why it is calling, a far lower chance of screening as spam.
Why a buyer cares now
Answer rate is the first KPI every outbound voice program answers to, and the recipient's decision happens at ring time on whatever the screen shows. The anonymous digits an unbranded call displays are the same presentation every spoofed robocall carries, which is exactly the traffic carriers and handsets are training recipients to screen out. A branded call moves your traffic out of that anonymous bucket on carriers that render RCD — the brand asset and call reason are verified, so a spammer cannot copy your screen the way they copy a spoofed digit string. The same market shift that makes CNAM-only presentation progressively weaker (screening apps, carrier-level spam labels, handset-level filters) is what makes branded display the differentiator — and industry answer-rate reports keep showing branded calls outpacing unbranded presentation.
That separation is also the fraud story: a verified display payload a bad actor cannot imitate is a stronger trust signal than any static CNAM string. The value is defensive as much as it is promotional.
How it composes with STIR/SHAKEN attestation
This is the part that must be stated precisely, because vendors blur it: RCD rides attestation, not instead of it.
The recipient's carrier still checks the STIR/SHAKEN attestation level on every call. RCD's display payload is delivered inside the signed PASSporT, so a call that fails attestation will not render the brand payload either — an unverified or unregistered sender falls back to plain CNAM, or raw digits. A brand on a C-attested call is a label on traffic the carrier already distrusts.
On Orbit the attestation layer is exactly the one described in the STIR/SHAKEN attestation explainer: numbers your organization owns through Orbit attest at A (full); leased pool numbers and numbers covered by a registered ATIS-1000092 delegate certificate cap at B (partial); anything else falls to C (gateway). The strongest RCD posture an outbound program can run is owned numbers at A attestation with a verified brand attached — the branded-calling levers below stack on top of the attestation posture you already tune.
The tenant-owned levers on Orbit
Branded calling on Orbit is a per-organization display configuration, a per-carrier provisioning workflow, and a per-DID override path — all tenant-owned, none of it a platform mandate:
- Org-level display config — the dashboard's branded-calling settings surface a display name, logo, and reason for calling you set per organization, plus an enable toggle. One submitted brand announces itself as the default on every eligible outbound number.
- Carrier verification workflow — the brand config carries a verification state machine (
unverified→pending_review→approved/rejected): you submit the brand, Devotel's branded-calling team clears it out-of-band, and only an approved brand is eligible for carrier submission. You cannot self-attest straight to approved — real branded display is a carrier-side trust gate. - Per-carrier provisioning — a wizard drives submission to each supported carrier (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) with a per-carrier status (
not_submitted/submitted/pending_carrier/active/rejected) you track per network. Theregistered_with_carrierslist on the config is operator-managed and read-only — carriers activate out-of-band, and the surface reports their status back. - Per-DID branded-caller profiles — a
branded-caller-profileresource on each DID (GET/PUT/DELETE /numbers/:id/branded-caller-profile) lets a team override the org brand on a per-number basis, so a shared-caller-ID program can render different brand assets on different numbers. Analytics events on those mutations never carry the brand display assets — adoption instrumentation is deliberately display-free.
Note what none of these levers do: submitting a brand, changing a logo, or registering a certificate never change the attestation level, never reroute a call, and never place one. Devotel's wholesale softswitch remains the carrier-of-record for every outbound leg and attaches the verified RCD payload alongside the STIR/SHAKEN level the platform attests.
Honest scope: where rendering actually lands
RCD works on a supporting carrier; elsewhere the call degrades gracefully, and honest scoping matters here:
- Carrier footprint is uneven. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all run branded-calling programs, but the rendering fleet differs per network, and RCD is predominantly a US-carrier capability — international recipients fall back to CNAM or raw digits.
- Handset support is uneven too. A carrier that accepts RCD may still render only on handsets running a compatible native dialer; older devices and some third-party dialer apps show the display name at best.
- Registration is per carrier, and none of it is instant. The brand must be verified before it is eligible for carrier submission, and carrier activation has its own review window. The checklist movement is: own the number (A attestation), verify the brand, submit to each carrier, then read provisioning status as
activenetwork by network.
Set expectations at that level: branded display is a progressive enhancement on top of attestation, not a universal render guarantee — every fallback still lands on the attestation layer you already control.
Frequently asked questions
Is branded calling the same as CNAM?
No. CNAM is a database lookup resolving digits to one static display name; branded calling (RCD) carries a signed display payload — name, logo, reason for calling — inside the call. CNAM names a number; RCD brands a verified call.
Does RCD replace STIR/SHAKEN?
No — the two stack. RCD's payload is delivered inside the signed PASSporT the attestation chain already checks, so a failing or missing attestation blocks the brand render too. RCD adds display on top of attestation; it never substitutes for it.
Can a delegate certificate get my brand to render?
Only partly. A registered delegate certificate raises external numbers you legitimately control from C to B attestation — legitimate remediation for genuine ownership gaps. But branded rendering depends on carrier-side brand verification and per-carrier activation, not on the certificate itself, and the strongest RCD posture remains owned numbers at A attestation.
Why does my call still show raw digits on some networks?
Because RCD renders only where the carrier has activated your brand and the receiving handset supports it. Everywhere else the call degrades to CNAM or digits by design — the fallback behavior, not a configuration failure.
Do I have to configure branded calling on every number?
Not by default. The org-level brand becomes the default for eligible outbound numbers once it is approved; the per-DID branded-caller profile is the optional override when a number should announce a different brand or reason than the organization default.
The takeaway
Attestation decides whether the carrier trusts your call; RCD decides what the recipient sees. The strongest outbound posture stacks them deliberately: own the numbers for A attestation, verify an org brand, activate it per carrier, and override per DID where the program calls for it. The tenant-owned levers above cover the whole sequence, and the glossary plus the STIR/SHAKEN attestation walkthrough close the loop on each layer in isolation.