Re: Direct Phone Number which is regarding for AS297

[johnl () iecc com (John R. Levine)]

> ISTR +1-888-xxxx being the international equivalent of 1-800-xxxx

Close, but no.  The prefixes for international "caller pays" calls to
US toll free numbers are:

        US              Int'l

(800) xxx-xxxx -> +1 880 xxx xxxx
(888) xxx-xxxx -> +1 881 xxx xxxx
(877) xxx-xxxx -> +1 882 xxx xxxx

It is my impression that the implementation of these numbers depend on
a lot of complicated telco stuff, and you can't reliably expect them
to work everywhere.  Remember that the US has many long distance
companies, and each toll-free number is individually routed to the
carrier that handles it, meaning that someone has to do a database dip
to route these calls to the appropriate carrier once they reach the
US.  It's not like normal numbers where every LD company can deliver
any call.

So I agree, any NOC or anyone else who expects to be reachable from
all over the world needs to have a regular old phone number.  For
companies that have some internal phone magic to route their 800
number that they want to use for all their calls, it would be quite
adequate to have a POTS number somewhere in the US that is
call-forwarded to the 800 number, since that call-forward is invisible
to the caller.



-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl () iecc com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail