Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
Toll-free telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan have the area code prefix 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888. Additionally, area codes 822, 880 through 887, and 889 are reserved for toll-free use in the future. 811 is excluded because it is a special dialing code in the group NXX for various other purposes.
Some businesses still display a 2L-5N number in advertisements, e.g., the Belvedere Construction Company in Detroit, Michigan not only still uses the 2L-5N format for its number (TYler 8-7100), it uses the format for the toll-free number (1-800-TY8-7100).
Toll-free directory assistance. In the U.S., directory assistance for companies with toll-free "800 numbers" (with area codes 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888) was available from toll-free directory assistance, reachable by dialing 1-800-555-1212, for many decades until it was discontinued in 2020.
Codes 880 through 882 were used (until 1 April 2004) to allow international customers to access toll-free numbers they otherwise could not by paying the international portion of the toll. 880 was paired with 800, 881 with 888, and 882 with 877. 888: toll-free telephone service: March 1, 1996: created; 889: not in use; available for toll-free ...
By the 1980s, computerisation of the system allowed British Telecom "Linkline" 0800 freephone numbers and AT&T +1-800- toll-free numbers to be controlled by a database and terminated virtually anywhere with each inbound call itemised and billed individually. This smart network was further refined to provide toll-free number portability in the ...
The requirement that an inbound toll-free number terminate at a special WATS line or fixed-rate service was also rendered obsolete by the 1980s due to intelligent network capability and technological improvement in the 800-service. A toll-free number may now terminate at a T-carrier line, at any standard local telephone number or at one of ...
The series N00 was used later for non-geographic numbers, starting with intrastate toll-free 800 numbers for Inward Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS) in 1965. [17] N10 numbers became teletypewriter exchanges , [ 18 ] and N11 were used for special services, such as information and emergency services.