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. Turn to Chapter 8 for more information regarding dedicated circuit protocols.
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.
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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.
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Dedicated circuits use trunk groups to receive toll-free calls instead of ring-to numbers. Your carrier designs your dedicated toll-free number to route to a trunk group specifying channels on your circuit that are to receive the incoming calls. Trunk groups can be limited to a single channel on a circuit, or may include several T-1s. Chapter 8 covers this information in detail.
Understanding the role of a RespOrg
The term RespOrg is an industry buzzword that refers to several pieces of toll-free-related minutiae. For example, a company that controls a toll-free number is called a RespOrg. The name is actually a reduction of the words responsible organization.
In the strictest sense, the company that holds RespOrg of a toll-free number is the only entity that can change and manipulate the setup of the number in the national database. A RespOrg document, more accurately called a RespOrg Letter of Authorization or RespOrg LOA is the paperwork you need to fill out in order to transfer a toll-free number to a new carrier. If you’re speaking about the RespOrg department, then you’re talking about the overworked group of people who work for a carrier. The people who work for the RespOrg department of a carrier live in a room insulated from the outside world by
6-foot thick walls of rebar-reinforced concrete and have only one phone line tied to a fax machine. Their sole job is the migration, design, and activation of toll-free numbers. Wild times. If you’re interested in the RespOrg department or the RespOrg LOA, please hop over to Chapter 9, where you can find out all the nuances of both. If you want even more information, you can explore the 800 Service Management System (SMS/800) Web site (www.sms800.com). This site is the heart of all toll-free service in the U.S. and Canada.
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