Thursday, February 1, 2007

Worldwide toll free service?

Our toll free numbers are accessible nationwide by default. You can add Canada or a few territories mostly in the Caribbean too if you want, although they cost a little more. The simple way to explain it is that you can’t call a toll free number in the North American Numbering Plan from anywhere that you have to dial a country code to reach the US. Unfortunately there is no great solution for worldwide toll free numbers. On the other hand since there’s no common world wide toll free system

There are UIFN numbers but they have to be set up country by country. You can also set up separate toll free numbers in many countries or work with a service that has different local access numbers already set up in each different country. But none of that is as easy as regular toll free numbers are here. Most people who do business outside of the US, list a local number and their email address. You could also use a service like skype to get a US number which would allow you to get through on a US toll free number. You could also use one of the click to talk services like GizmoCall.com which would allow someone to download a small program to access the US numbering system through the Internet.

When I got my HP laptop, it came with a whole booklet of contact numbers. I laughed because that really illustrated that there is definitely no simple solution to receive calls worldwide. But you can forward calls from within the North America to almost anywhere in the world. This is very helpful for companies outside of the US looking to expand within the US. See http://www.telcan.net/, (also under http://www.callture.com/) http://www.uwtcallback.com/ or http://www.get1800.com/. Al of these companies can forward toll free service basically anywhere in the world and control it with a portal.

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