Vonage exposes PSTN branded calling as an API, with First Orion's INFORM underneath

Vonage has published a walkthrough for wiring PSTN Branded Calling into its Voice API through First Orion, so that outbound calls “display your company name, logo, and call purpose” on the handset instead of a bare number. The tutorial configures a branded-calling program, links it to a Vonage virtual number, and places a call from a small Node.js app.

The interesting part isn’t the code, it’s the plumbing it reveals. Branded calling is turning into a standard CPaaS primitive rather than a carrier-direct integration: Vonage surfaces it as an API, with First Orion’s INFORM platform doing the carrier-network delivery underneath — the same display-name-and-logo layer First Orion sells directly to enterprises, now reachable by any developer already building on Vonage. It’s also a small marker of how branded calling and STIR/SHAKEN attestation are converging in the CPaaS stack as the two halves of “make this call trustworthy when it lands.”

Worth watching whether branded calling commoditizes the way A2P messaging did once it became a vendor checkbox — at which point the differentiation stops being the feature and starts being reach: which carriers and handsets actually render the brand.