As cool as caller-id is there are times when a number shows up repeatedly and you don't know who it is. In this day and age if you are like most people you don't answer the phone if you don't know who is calling. But there are times you would like to know who the number belongs to and if it's a cellular number your best choice is to do a cell phone reverse phone lookup on the internet.

Why on the internet?

The main reason is because there is no phone book for cell phone names and numbers. The cellular providers are required by federal regulations to keep their customer data from freely being given to the general public in either book form or in online searchable databases.

Fortunately there are ways to find out who belongs to a cell phone number that are easy to do, with varying degrees of success.

One thing to be careful of are websites that purport to offer free cell phone number lookups. Because of the rules that regulate cellular information this is not possible unless the information has been given freely by the cell phone owner. Most of these sites are offering free access to landline information which can be given away at no cost. Many sites offer both landline information and cell phone information but you have to pay for mobile phone names and numbers.

If you truly want access to the hundreds of millions of cell phone numbers a national cellular registry site is the best place to go. These sites provide a legal means to do unlimited reverse cell phone searches for those unknown numbers, or look up someone's number if you know their name.

In addition to doing a cell phone reverse phone lookup for names and numbers these third party providers will also give you access to unlisted numbers, fax numbers, and pager information. The amount of information you can access makes the small membership fee more then worth the cost.