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Can I Own an 800 Number ?

You can obtain an 800/866/877/888 number from your local incumbent phone company, from AT&T even if they are not your local company, from VoIP companies such as CallCentric or Voip.MS or others, or from other sources as well.

You do have "rights" to your number, and can port it. The question of "ownership" is almost a philosophical one. Does anyone ever truly own a cat? You may house the cat and feed it, but do you own it?

See also:

Bill Quimby's site:
»www.tollfreenumbers.com/

»www.callcentric.com/dids/toll_free_numbers

»voip.ms/tollfree.php

»businessesales.att.com/products/···ng.jhtml

»www.kall8.com/index.php

Lots more out there as well. But check out companies carefully.

reply to SteveinNC
You can get 800 numbers from many places including your local Telco.
Usually the way it works is you set up a redirection from the toll free number it to a local number (the local number doesn't have to be services by the same company).
I'm assuming you know that you will have to pay per minute charges for all the calls you receive through the toll free number.
--
»www.voipfan.net

reply to SteveinNC
Here's an old thread that provides some insight into the TollFree topic: »I want true 800 to ring to my VOIP

reply to SteveinNC
Yes you can own one, although it is true there is no physical number you own, or as with a cat, do you own it or does the cat own you?

Once you get a toll free number, you should be able to port it to any other provider (with toll free numbers they're called "RespOrgs"). This could work to your advantage as providers have different rates. KALL8 claims some of the numbers you get from them are non-transferable. These are usually the really good business class numbers where they charge you onerous monthly fees. If you're in for a fight, you still may be able to transfer them out.

I do agree that »www.tollfreenumbers.com is a good place to start. The site does have a good amount of information on the subject.

reply to SteveinNC
I used Kall8 for years and highly recommend them.

reply to PX Eliezer

reply to SteveinNC
yes, you can "own" a toll-free number, subject to the carrier's rules which almost always revolve around keeping your payments current. there are some sneaky providers that you'll find on search engines that will not allow you to transfer the number to a different carrier (which is an "ownership" issue), but they will allow you to point it to a different phone number.

the question is do you need a toll-free number in the first place? do your users dial the toll-free number, or are you call forwarding in the event of no answer? Is the answering service in your local calling area, or is it long distance? how many minutes of use normally get billed?

Here's a circumstance where a toll-free number is almost always worthless (relative to other options): callers dial a local number and are forwarded to an answering service in another state after 5 rings, and those calls average less than 4 hours of call time per month.

A telecom manager at EDS taught me a long time ago, "Don't give me what I ask for, give me what I want." Meaning that I had to understand what he was trying to do with a project, and ignore what his in-house analysts had assumed was the correct solution.

Just because a toll-free number was the correct solution in the past does not mean that it will be the correct solution going forward. Having just established that a toll-free number might not be what you want, why not tell us what you want to do?

reply to SteveinNC
Thanks for this input. The links answer a lot of questions.

Do we need an 800# ? Good response and has me thinking ?