Toll-free number
A toll-free (freephone) number is a phone number that callers can dial at no cost, because the business that owns the number pays for incoming calls.
How a toll-free number works
Toll-free numbers use special prefixes that differ by country, such as 800 in the United States or 0800 in the United Kingdom and many European countries. The carrier charges the business for each call, often per minute. Some toll-free numbers can be reached only from inside the country they belong to, and calls from mobiles may be treated differently from calls from landlines.
A UIFN (universal international freephone number) is a single toll-free number that can work in several countries.
When businesses use toll-free numbers
- Customer support and sales lines where the business wants to remove any barrier to calling.
- A national presence without choosing one city.
- Advertising, where a memorable number matters.
Toll-free numbers in phone.systems™
phone.systems™ uses numbers from DIDWW, which offers toll-free and UIFN numbers alongside local, national, mobile and shared-cost numbers. You order a toll-free number in your DIDWW account, assign it to the phone.systems™ trunk, and it appears in Numbers, ready to start a call flow like any other number. Toll-free numbers are billed separately at DIDWW rates, which include the cost of incoming calls — see DIDWW coverage and prices. See also DID numbers.