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 is free of charge, unless air-charges apply for mobile telephone service. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
History The features of toll-free services have evolved as telephone networks have evolved from electro-mechanical call switching to computerized stored program controlled networks.
Originally, before the automatic system was developed, a call billed to the called party had to be placed through a telephone company operator as a collect call, often long-distance. The operator had to secure acceptance of the charges at the destination number, or even transfer that decision to a long-distance operator, before manually completing the call.
Some large businesses and government offices received large numbers of collect calls, which proved time-consuming for operators and the callers.
Manual toll-free systems Prior to the development of customer-dialed toll-free service many telephone companies provided the service by operator assistance for telephone subscribers without dial telephones (manual service).
Operator-assisted toll-free calling included the Zenith number service introduced in the 1930s in the U.S. and Canada, as well as the manual 'Freephone' service introduced by the British Post Office in 1960.
Both systems were similar in concept. The calling party would ring the operator (now '100' in the UK, '0' in Canada/U.S.) and ask for a specific free number. In the U.S., the caller would ask for a number like "Zenith 12345" (some areas used "Enterprise" or "WX" instead of "Zenith").History of Toll-Free Numbers, from bebusinessed.com In the UK, the caller would ask the operator to ring "Freephone" and a name or number (such as "Freephone Crimebusters" to pass on tips about a crime to the constabulary).Blackburn Police Station , Westlothian UK, "dial 100 and ask for Freephone Crimebusters" to report tips about crime
In either case, the operator would look up the corresponding geographic number from a list and place the call with charges reversed.
A Zenith number was typically available from a predefined area, anything from a few nearby cities to a province or state, and was listed in local directories in each community from which the subscriber was willing to accept the charges for inbound calls.
Until the introduction of InWATS toll-free service by the Bell System on May 2, 1967 and the Linkline (later "Freefone") 0800 services by British Telecom on 12 November 1985, manually ringing the operator was the standard means to place a toll-free call. More than a few established manual "Freephone" or "Zenith" numbers remained in use for many years after competing automated systems (0800 in UK, 1800 in U.S.) were deployed in parallel for new toll-free numbers.
Initial direct-dial systems
An automated toll-free service was introduced by AT&T in 1966 (US intrastate) and 1967 (US interstate) as an alternative to operator-assisted collect calling and manual "Zenith" or "Enterprise" numbers. This Inward Wide Area Telephone Service (InWATS) allowed calls to be made directly from anywhere in a predefined area by dialling the prefix 1800- and a seven-digit number.
The system initially provided no support for Automatic Number Identification and no itemised record of calls, instead requiring subscribers to obtain expensive fixed-rate lines which included some number of hours of inbound calling from a "band" of one or several U.S. states or Canadian provinces. Early InWATS 800 calling lacked the complex routing features offered with modern toll-free service. After competitive carriers were allowed to compete with AT&T in establishing toll-free service, the three digit exchange following the 800 prefix was linked to a specific destination carrier and area code; the number itself corresponded to specific telephone switching offices and trunk groups. All calls went to one central destination; there was no means to place a toll-free call to another country.
Despite its limitations (and the relatively high cost of long distance in that era), the system was adequate for the needs of large volume users such as hotel chains, airlines and rental car firms which used it to build a truly national presence.
For small regional businesses who received few long-distance calls, the original InWATS was prohibitively expensive. As a fixed-rate bulk service requiring special trunks, it was suited only to large volume users.
Modern direct-dial systems Modern toll-free service became possible when telephone companies replaced their electro-mechanical switching systems with computerized switching systems. This allowed toll-free calls to be routed based on instructions located in central databases.
In the United States, AT&T engineer Roy P. Weber from Bridgewater, New Jersey patented a 'Data Base Communication Call Processing Method' which was deployed by AT&T in 1982. The called number was an index into a database, allowing a 'Toll-Free Call' or '800 Call' to be directed anywhere. This feature and other advances that made it possible were what led to AT&T marketing analyst Dodge Cepeda from Bedminster, New Jersey to propose the introduction of providing 800 Toll-Free Service to small and medium-size business customers on a nationwide basis. Once this service was implemented, it became possible for the very smallest of business operations to have potential customers contact them free of charge at a time when long-distance calling was expensive. Until this time, 800 Service was only available to major Fortune 500 companies.
In the United Kingdom, BT introduced "Linkline" on 12 November 1985. No more need to manually ring the operator, two new prefixes 0800 (an automated toll-free service which became "Freefone") and 0345 (a shared-cost service marketed as "Lo-Call" because initially its rates resembled those of local calls) could be reached by direct dial. Cable and Wireless used 0500 and 0645, in much the same way, just a few years later.
Vanity numbering
A toll-free vanity number, custom toll-free number, or mnemonic is easy to remember; it spells and means something or it contains an easily recognized numeric pattern. An easily remembered number is valued as a branding and direct response tool in business advertising.
In the United States, Federal Communications Commission regulations mandate that numbers be allocated on a first come, first served basis; this gives vanity number operators who register as RespOrgs a strong advantage in obtaining the most valuable phonewords, as they have first access to newly disconnected numbers and to newly introduced toll-free area codes. In Australia, premium numbers, such as the 13-series or the vanity phone words, are distributed by auction separately from the administrative procedure to assign random, generic numbers from the available pool.
Shared use In toll-free telephony, a shared-use number is a vanity number (usually a valuable generic phone word), which is rented to multiple local companies in the same line of business in different cities. These appear in Australia (1300 and 1800) and North America (1800, etc.); in the U.S., the RespOrg infrastructure is used to direct calls for the same number to different vendors based on the area code of the calling number.
As one example, a taxi company could rent shared use of 1800TAXICAB in one city. The number belongs to a company in Van Nuys, California, but is redirected to local cab companies on a city-by-city basis and promoted by being printed on everything from individual taxi cab hub caps to campaigns against drunk driving. Another example is Mark Russell's 1800GREATRATE, a shared-use number rented to lenders in various cities nationwide for a monthly fee.
One former Mercedes dealer obtained 1800MERCEDES, charging other dealers to receive calls to that number from their local areas. The automaker unsuccessfully sued MBZ Communications of Owatonna, Minnesota, operated by former Mercedes dealer Donald Bloom, alleging deception and trademark infringement. Mercedes was ultimately forced to obtain a different number, 1-800-FOR-MERCEDES.The United States Patents Quarterly, Page 1361, Associated Industry Publications, 2003
A company renting 1800REDCROSS at a premium price to individual local Red Cross chapters as "shared use" was less fortunate; the Federal Communications Commission reassigned that number to the American Red Cross as an emergency response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Shared use can be used as a means to circumvent FCC regulations against "warehousing, hoarding and brokering" toll-free numbers as technically the number is not being sold, only rented one city or region at a time. The practice is nonetheless potentially problematic as it leaves local businesses advertising numbers which they do not own and for which they therefore have no number portability. The cost per minute and per month is typically far higher for a shared-use number than for a standard toll-free vanity number which a local business controls outright, and there is little protection if the shared use company fails to meet its obligations or ceases operation.
There are also technical limitations; voice over IP users in particular are difficult to geolocate as their calls may be gated to the public switched telephone network at a point hundreds or thousands of miles away from their actual location. A roaming mobile or Internet telephone user is effectively (like the user of a foreign exchange line) attached to a distant rate centre far from their physical address.
If a program like Crime Stoppers is inherently regional or local, but its national 1800222TIPS number is shared between multiple exchanges, the exchange accepting the call must determine whether the call belongs to some other region.
International implementations
The implementation of toll-free calling by assigning special telephone numbers for charging a destination party is implemented in many countries by various dialing prefixes in the local number plan. In Argentina, the prefix for toll-free numbers is "0800", followed by seven digits (the first three of them are fixed for each operator, so the user may know which carrier is serving the party they are calling). These numbers are called "0800" (cero ochocientos) or líneas gratuitas (free lines). There is also a local-rate service named "0-810" (cero ochocientos diez) where the calling party pays the fee for a local call and the called party pays for the long-distance fees. In Armenia, the toll-free prefix is "800" followed by a five-digit number. In Australia, the toll-free prefix is "1800" followed by a six-digit number. Calls are free from any landline and generally free from mobiles, although some mobile providers may charge their own fee. A fixed-cost fee (usually the cost of a local call) is payable by the caller to "1300" and "13" prefix numbers (followed by six and four digits respectively). In Austria, the prefix for toll-free numbers is also "0800", but only followed by six digits. They are commonly referred to as null-achthunderter Nummern (zero-eight hundred numbers). In Azerbaijan, the prefix for toll -free numbers is 088, followed with seven digits. Toll Free calls are available both from mobile and landline phone operators. In Belgium, the prefix "0800" is used for toll-free numbers, followed by 5 digits. They are commonly referred to as nul-achthonderd nummers (zero-eight hundred numbers) in Dutch, numéros verts (green numbers) in French or "null-achthunderter Nummern" (zero-eight hundred numbers) in the German speaking area.