Crunching the 800 number database

I'm going to try and post some interesting or funny questions and answers about things related to toll free numbers here.

I came across your website while searching for a solution to a request from our CEO. We'd like to get a listing of available toll-free numbers so we can run a tool developed in house against it to generate available vanity numbers. I know you offer the search function but my CEO wants to easily manipulate the results against a large cross section of numbers.

So, essentially we are looking for a listing of all available toll-free numbers at any given moment, understanding that the list will probably be outdated 10 seconds after it is generated because of how quickly toll-free number availability changes. Can you provide such a list and what would be the possible cost? If you are unable to provide the list do you know of a possible alternative we could pursue?

Thanking you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Eric

Dear Eric,

As of 1/6/2007 at 11:59pm eastern time, there were 8,201,245 toll free numbers available in the spare status. If you printed that out two columns per page in small print with 200 numbers per page, it would be 80 some reams of paper. Lets just say it would fill a medium sized closet almost to the ceiling. Not only would it be out of date before you could do anything, but the cost of producing it would be ridiculous.

I’ve been in the vanity number business for 12 years. I’ve spent 4 or 5 years and at least half a million dollars developing my system. It’s far better than anything any phone company or resporg has access to through the SMS administration, through 8MS (a third party API access). It costs me about $15,000 per month to produce and I give access to it away for free of the general public right over the web. Its so simple my 9 year old daughter could make it work, by just typing in a couple words and her email address.

I can understand that some people want to do things themselves. But what you’re asking for is clearly NOT AVAILABLE. You also have to realize that from my perspective it seems more than a little silly to think you can just crunch a few numbers and run a dictionary against a list and somehow come up with anything better.

.Bill Quimby.
1-800 MARKETER
TollFreeNumbers.com
billquimby@billquimby.net


I should point out that this was from someone at a very large company. It isn't exactly a common question but I thought it was interesting to get a little better idea of the size and scope of our system and what it takes to do all this stuff.