A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, reachable by a system of destination code routing. Telephone numbering plans are defined in each of the administrative regions of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and in private telephone networks.
In the United Kingdom, telephone numbers are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, which is the system for assigning telephone numbers to subscriber stations.
In Argentina, area codes are two, three, or four digits long. Local customer numbers are six to eight digits long. The total number of digits is ten, for example, phone number (11) 1234-5678 for Buenos Aires is made up of a 2-digit area code number and an 8-digit subscriber's number, while (383) 123-4567 would be an example of a Catamarca number.
Numbers on the Irish telephone numbering plan are regulated and assigned to operators by ComReg.
Telephone numbers in Singapore, also known as the National Numbering Plan, are regulated by the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA). Due to the small geographical size of Singapore, there are no area or trunk codes; all numbers belong to one numbering area, and thus come in the same 8-digit format. Numbers are categorised based on the first digit, thus providing ten possible categories, of which six are currently in use and the remaining four reserved for future usage.
The dialling plan for mobile networks and new landline operators is closed; all subscriber numbers must be dialled in full. For landline numbers starting with 02, the dialling plan used to be open; the trunk digit and area code could be omitted if the caller was in the same area code as the callee. However, starting May 3, 2008, all landline numbers must be dialled in full.
The format of telephone numbers in Australia has changed over time to allow for the expansion of the subscriber base as technology has improved.
PhONEday was a change to telephone numbering in the United Kingdom on Sunday 16 April 1995. A shortage of unique telephone numbers in the old dialling system meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult in certain areas of the country to assign unique numbers to new subscribers. To counteract this, dialling codes starting with 0 were changed to start with 01. In Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, the existing area codes, which were 5 digits in length, were instead entirely replaced with new codes comprising 4 digits, to increase the amount of possible numbers by a factor of ten. The changes made possible the ability to provision new numbers in each of these five cities. It also had the effect of assigning all geographic landline telephone numbers into one range of numbers starting with 01, allowing for further changes to be made at the Big Number Change in 2000. A £16m advertising campaign, and an eight-month parallel period during which both old and new codes were active, preceded the change. PhONEday followed a change made in May 1990, when the old London area code 01 was released from use, permitting all United Kingdom geographic numbers to begin with this prefix. Originally planned in 1991 to take place in 1994, in 1992 the change was postponed until the Easter Sunday bank holiday in 1995.
Telephone numbers in Israel consist of an area code and a subscriber number. The dial plan type in Israel is closed, and "0" is the internal trunk prefix in Israel. Israel's country calling code is +972.
The regulation of telephone numbers in Germany is the responsibility of the Federal Network Agency of the German government. The agency has a mandate to telecommunications in Germany and other infrastructure systems.
Thailand's telephone numbering plan in Thailand is managed by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) in accordance with International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) recommendation E.164.
Telephone numbers in India are administered under the National Numbering Plan of 2003 by the Department of Telecommunications of the Government of India. The numbering plan was last updated in 2015. The country code "91" was assigned to India by the International Telecommunication Union in the 1960s.
Telephone numbers in Canada follow the fixed-length format of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) of a three-digit area code, a three-digit central office code, and a four-digit station or line code. This is represented as NPA NXX XXXX.
A telephone number in Belgium is a sequence of nine or ten digits dialed on a telephone to make a call on the Belgian telephone network. Belgium is under a full number dialing plan, meaning that the full national number must be dialed for all calls, while it retains the trunk code, '0', for all national dialling.
National conventions for writing telephone numbers vary by country. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) publishes a recommendation entitled Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses. Recommendation E.123 specifies the format of telephone numbers assigned to telephones and similar communication endpoints in national telephone numbering plans.
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), or other public and private networks. Modern smart phones have added a built-in layer of abstraction whereby individuals or businesses are saved into a contacts application and the numbers no longer have to be written down or memorized.
Telephone numbers in Georgia consist of 9 digits and follow a closed numbering plan in which the initial 2 or 3 digits indicate the service or area code and the remaining 6 or 7 digits identify the subscriber.
