Can someone tell me how to dial 800 and 888 numbers in the US from > Toronto?
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A good question. This is mostly up to
> the recipient of the call, if he wants to receive a call from an
> international point or not.... The other thing you
> can do is use the 'USA Direct' number from the country you are in, and
> on that, _you_ pay for a call to the USA border and then the 800 owner
> pays for a call from there to his point. There are also 'privately
> maintained gateways' doing the same thing. Dial direct into them then
> on fresh dialtone dial the USA toll-free number. You cannot force
> someone to pay for a collect call (automated, via 800 or otherwise)
> unless they wish to do so.
When BT started doing something like this, I looked into how it worked. Since I worked for another carrier at the time, I had a friend in London dial one of our 800 numbers and dumped the ANI. If I recall correctly, the call was made to appear to come from Phoenix, which is rather poetic. It was a pretty neat hack on the one side, but might have been theft from the 800 subscriber on the other, who might not even be capable of doing business overseas.
I guess it was never a big enough issue for anyone to raise Cain about. For what national 800 costs these days, if I got enough overseas calls to be irritated, I would probably be paying more attention to the interest in my offerings from as yet unserved markets.