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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.
A vanity number is a local or free-to-call telephone number for which a subscriber requests an easily remembered sequence of numbers for marketing purposes. While many of these are phonewords (such as 1-800-Flowers , 313-DETROIT, 1-800-Taxicab or 1-800-Battery), occasionally all-numeric vanity phone numbers are used.
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.
Toll-free telephone numbers are often branded using phonewords; some firms use easily memorable vanity telephone numbers like 1-800 Contacts, 1-800-Flowers, 1-866-RING-RING, or 1-800-GOT-JUNK? as brands for flagship products or names for entire companies.
Hungarian taxi company Tele5 Taxi uses 555-5555 as a vanity number, while at least one company specializing in vanity numbers sells cell phone numbers starting with the digits 555 for a premium rate, capitalizing on their fame in American movies.
Toll-free number portability (Canada, US, New Zealand) or freephone number portability (Australia, UK) allows the subscriber of a freephone number to switch providers while retaining the same number for incoming calls.
Vanity numbers became easier to obtain as a toll-free exchange prefix was no longer tied to a geographic location. By the 21st century, Voice over IP placed toll-free and foreign exchange numbers into the hands of even the smallest users, to whom dedicated inbound lines under the original InWATS model would have been prohibitively expensive.
The toll-free telephone numbers in NPA 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, 844, and 833 have been portable through the RespOrg system since 1993. Toll charges. Telephone calls between countries and territories of the NANP are not typically charged at domestic rates.
Toll Free: These are usually ten digit numbers beginning with 800 or 400. 800 (toll-free) are accessible only when called from landline phones, while 400 (shared toll) are accessible from all phones. 400 XXX XXXX or 800 XXXX XXXX.
This page was last edited on 24 January 2018, at 23:07 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply.