Routing Toll Free Numbers

[tkinney]

Good Morning,
I currently have all my 800, 866, 877 numbers outgoing route over my local CO trunk which is the way I was told to route them to make sure we are not charged. Occasionally we have a dial in conference and our local lines fill up quick with so many people dialing out at the same time. If I was to re-route the 800 outgoing over the long distance trunks ( 2 way T1 tie) would we be charged for those calls?

Thanks!
Tina

 

[sjforcum]

My gut tells me no, but you may want to confirm that with your LD vendor...

 

[marcell55]

Unfortunately, you can not route 800 numbers out over long distance trunks. They have to go through a local carrier. Do you have a local T1 that you could route through?

 

[dufus2506]

No you won't be charged for the call, however you may run into problems.

If your LD provider is AT&T, and the toll free number someone called is carried by MCI, it may fail.

This is because the LD carriers are not (entirely) hooked into the 800 SMS system, and even if they were, MCI is MCI and AT&T is AT&T, and never the twain shall meet. (By law in North America.)

The local Bell's CO looks up called toll free numbers in the 800 SMS database, and routes the call onto the correct carrier when it finds out who it belongs to. Since AT&T can't route a call to the MCI network, calls to toll free numbers where MCI is the carrier would fail.

Click here for more information about toll free routing in North America.

http://www.sms800.com

Carpe dialem! (Seize the line!)

 

[bwilch]

Tina,

I would suggest checking with your LD carrier in reference to this. Two reasons:
1, there's no way for us to know for sure if there will be a charge or not.
2, in the installations I've done on LD T's, it's varried based upon the carrier if they will even let you route these types of calls over their circuits. I'm always a believer of "better safe than sorry" so just to be sure, just give them a call.

 

[tkinney]

Thanks guys for all of the help! My carrier is Sprint and the dial in is AT&T so thats out! I was told to route these over local but just assumed it was so they would be "free" calls. I have one of those managers here that can't understand why our lines are busy because 40 people are dialing the same 800 over the local T1 with 8 lousy pots lines we have! He wants an explanation as to why I can't re-route the calls so this is why I turned to you for help. I wish there was a way I could dial in and then have the speaker (the president of the company) go over the paging system....this would sure save on the phone bills across the country!

Thanks again
Tina