Taking a Peak at Toll-Free Service Basics

You know that toll-free numbers put the financial burden on the receiving end of a phone call, rather than on the calling end. Often referred to as reverse billing, toll-free numbers are convenient for customers and also enable businesses to build name (and number recognition). The following sections give you some general info about how toll-free numbers function.

Understanding the physical properties of a toll-free number

A toll-free number is not like your home or office phone number. The line for that number doesn’t physically exist anywhere. If your business has a toll-free number and you dial out from a line that receives those calls, the person receiving your call sees your business’s local phone number, not the toll-free number, in his or her Caller ID window. This happens because toll-free numbers are an inbound service riding over your existing phone line, and must have a local phone number or dedicated circuit to be routed over to allow them to work.

Technical Stuff Toll-free numbers sometimes do appear in the Caller ID window, however. This doesn’t mean that everything I just said is a lie, just that when a toll-free number appears in your Caller ID window you’re experiencing a little telecom sleight of hand. Telemarketing companies are required by law to display a legitimate Caller ID phone number. To accomplish this for all of their customers across the U.S., telemarketers use their dialing software to insert a simulated Caller ID number. What you see could be a local phone number of the order or customer service department, or it could be the toll-free number used for accepting orders. The number you see in your Caller ID isn’t legitimate, because it doesn’t physically exist on a phone line, but that’s just a technicality. The main thing is that you can use the number to call the telemarketer and buy products or to tell the business to stop calling you. The industry term for this simulated phone number is pseudo ANI (the ANI part stands for Automatic Number Identification — telecom-speak for a phone number). If your dedicated circuit uses the ISDN protocol, your hardware may be able to input the pseudo ANI on the calls for you. All other protocols require your carrier to assign the pseudo ANI to your circuit through their normal order process.

Understanding the ring-to factor

Toll-free numbers are linked to ring-to numbers. Although toll-free numbers aren’t physically associated with particular phones connected with a phone jack into the wall, you do receive the toll-free calls with a traditional telephone. Incoming calls get sent to your office or your home when your carrier directs the calls to either a ring-to number or a dedicated circuit.

A ring-to number is the regular phone line that is tied to a phone jack on your wall. Your carrier has a database that tells it how to route calls so that they end up in your office. If you have a ring-to number configuration, you need
to know the phone number your toll free rings to in case you have to troubleshoot it, or order more toll-free numbers.

Discovering toll-free numbers in their natural habitat: The SMS database

Because toll-free numbers aren’t tied to copper wires in someone’s home or business, you probably wonder where they do live. All the toll-free numbers in the U.S. live as data in a series of computers that make up a huge national network called the Service Management System (SMS) database. This national archive lists every toll-free number in the U.S. and directs every call made to a toll-free number to the correct network to complete the call. In addition to the basic routing information, the database contains very specific information about individual toll-free numbers.