![]() | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and Canada and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(November 2023) |
A vanity number is a local or free-to-call telephone number for which a subscriber requests an easily remembered sequence of numbers for marketing purposes.
While many of these are phonewords (such as 1-800-Flowers, 313-DETROIT, 1-800-Taxicab or 1-800-Battery), occasionally all-numeric vanity phone numbers are used.
Numbers ending with repeated digits (such as -1111) are heavily advertised by taxi and food delivery companies; the Pizza Pizza chain has trademarked 967-1111, a Toronto local number. [1] A memorable repeated sequence is also valuable to hotel chain franchisors such as Super 8 Motels, which advertises 1-800-800-8000. [2]
A broadcaster may match a local telephone number to a station frequency (an AM 1010 radio call-in programme may use 872-1010 [3] or a TV channel 13 studio may adopt 224-13-13. [4] ). An eye clinic may choose a number terminating in 20/20. [5]
Other possible numeric indicators which convey specific meanings are 24/7 (twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week) or 2-4-1 (two for the price of one); the latter is used by 241 Pizza by advertising local number 241-0-241 or a variant.
An emergency telephone number is a number that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assistance. The emergency number differs from country to country; it is typically a three-digit number so that it can be easily remembered and dialed quickly. Some countries have a different emergency number for each of the different emergency services; these often differ only by the last digit.
A telephone keypad is a keypad installed on a push-button telephone or similar telecommunication device for dialing a telephone number. It was standardized when the dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) system was developed in the Bell System in the United States in the 1960s that replaced rotary dialing originally developed in electromechanical switching systems. Because of the installed abundance of rotary dial equipment well into the 1990s, many telephone keypads were also designed to produce loop-disconnect pulses electronically, and some could be optionally switched to produce either DTMF or pulses.
Pizza Pizza Ltd. is a franchised Canadian pizza quick-service restaurant with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. Its restaurants are mainly in the province of Ontario while others are located in Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and western Canada. Franchises in western Canada are mostly run through Alberta-based subsidiary Pizza 73. It has over 500 locations, including over 150 non-traditional locations.
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.
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity.
A Zenith number was a telephone service in the United States that allowed a calling party to call the service subscriber at no charge by requesting the name Zenith and the number from a switchboard operator. The service preceded the system of toll-free telephone numbers with area code 800 in the United States. Similar services used the names "Enterprise" or "WX" number.
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.
Area codes 416, 647, and 437 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Area code 416 is one of the original North American area codes created by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1947. Area codes 647 and 437 are additional area codes for the same numbering plan area (NPA), forming an overlay numbering plan.
Area codes 613, 343, and 753 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for Ottawa and surrounding Eastern Ontario, Canada. Area code 613 is one of the 86 original North American area codes assigned in October 1947. Area code 343 was assigned to the numbering plan area in an overlay plan activated on May 17, 2010. Area code 753 was assigned as an additional overlay code for the numbering plan area, activated on March 26, 2022.
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.
The domain name .tel is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. It was approved by ICANN as a sponsored top-level domain, and is operated by Telnic. Telnic announced in January 2011 that over 300,000 domains had been registered since the start of general availability on 24 March 2009. A substantial drop of mostly IDN .tel's occurred at the beginning of 2014. The total number of registered websites under .tel as of 9 October 2023 is approximately 43,227.
1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. is a floral and foods gift retailer and distribution company in the United States. The company's focus, except for Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, is on gift baskets. They also use the name 1-800-Baskets.com. Their use of "coyly self-descriptive telephone numbers" is part of founder James McCann's business model.
Phonewords are mnemonic phrases represented as alphanumeric equivalents of a telephone number. In many countries, the digits on the telephone keypad also have letters assigned. By replacing the digits of a telephone number with the corresponding letters, it is sometimes possible to form a whole or partial word, an acronym, abbreviation, or some other alphanumeric combination.
A RespOrg, or responsible organization, is a company that maintains the registration for individual toll-free telephone numbers In the North American Numbering Plan by means of the distributed Service Management System/800 database.
A teledotcom is a domain name that not only spells a memorable word but also has a matching toll-free telephone number. This means the word that spells something will have a toll-free prefix and a top level domain extension after it. A teledotcom can be accessible by either phone or internet address.
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.
A misdialed call or wrong number is a telephone call or text message to an incorrect telephone number. This may occur because the number has been physically misdialed, the number is simply incorrect, or because the area code or ownership of the number has changed. In North America, toll-free numbers are a frequent source of wrong numbers because they often have a history of prior ownership. In the United Kingdom, many misdialed calls have been due to public confusion over the dialing codes for some areas.
Dial-A-Mattress Franchise Corp. v. Page, 880 F.2d 675, is a case that was tried in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which dealt with the issue of whether a plaintiff's telephone number, which translates into a generic term, is entitled to judicial protection when a second comer tries to use a confusingly similar number.
Toll-free number portability or freephone number portability allows the subscriber of a freephone number to switch providers while retaining the same number for incoming calls. Similar schemes exist in many countries for local number portability and mobile number portability, although implementation details for each portability scheme varies between countries.
Somos, Inc., is a company that manages registry databases for the telecommunications industry. Additionally, since January 1, 2019, the company has been the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, under a contract granted by the Federal Communications Commission.