TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: How to Dial US Toll Free from Toronto

Re: How to Dial US Toll Free from Toronto

John McHarry (jmcharry@comcast.net)
Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:12:11 GMT

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 07:08:02 -0800, gladman911 wrote:

> Can someone tell me how to dial 800 and 888 numbers in the US from
> Toronto?

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A good question. This is mostly up to
> the recipient of the call, if he wants to receive a call from an
> international point or not.... The other thing you
> can do is use the 'USA Direct' number from the country you are in, and
> on that, _you_ pay for a call to the USA border and then the 800 owner
> pays for a call from there to his point. There are also 'privately
> maintained gateways' doing the same thing. Dial direct into them then
> on fresh dialtone dial the USA toll-free number. You cannot force
> someone to pay for a collect call (automated, via 800 or otherwise)
> unless they wish to do so.

When BT started doing something like this, I looked into how it
worked. Since I worked for another carrier at the time, I had a
friend in London dial one of our 800 numbers and dumped the ANI. If I
recall correctly, the call was made to appear to come from Phoenix,
which is rather poetic. It was a pretty neat hack on the one side, but
might have been theft from the 800 subscriber on the other, who might
not even be capable of doing business overseas.

I guess it was never a big enough issue for anyone to raise Cain
about. For what national 800 costs these days, if I got enough
overseas calls to be irritated, I would probably be paying more
attention to the interest in my offerings from as yet unserved
markets.

Post Followup Article Use your browser's quoting feature to quote article into reply
Go to Next message: John McHarry: "Re: Worldwide Telephone Numbers (Re: How to Dial US Toll Free)"
Go to Previous message: Robert Bonomi: "Re: History of Hayes Modem"
May be in reply to: gladman911@gmail.com: "How to Dial US Toll Free from Toronto"
Next in thread: Bruce: "Re: How to Dial US Toll Free from Toronto"
TELECOM Digest: Home Page