What Is Toll Free?

We’ve all heard the term “toll free number.” Nearly all of us have called a toll free number at one time or another. But just what does that term mean and how do businesses go about getting toll free numbers?

You know that toll free telephone numbers must be something special because you aren’t assigned one automatically. When you order landline, VoIP or cellular telephone service, you are assigned a 10 digit phone number that relates to a specific geographical area. I’ll assume you are located in the US or Canada, which both use the North America Numbering Plan (NANP). Your number is formatted as: 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX.

Here’s how that breaks down. 1 is the trunk code or country code. Other countries use codes other than "1". It used to be that we thought of dialing 1 only to make a long distance call. Nowadays, with multiple area codes for each city, most of us have to dial 1 plus the area code even to make local calls. NPA is the Numbering Plan Area code, also called the area code. You might dial area code 312 for Chicago or 213 for Los Angeles. By knowing the area code, you know roughly where the call is going. That can be manipulated somewhat by VoIP providers, who will assign you whatever area code you want. Do you want people to think your business is in Manhattan? Get a 212 area code.

There are some area codes that have nothing to do with geographical areas. These are the toll free area codes, also called toll free prefixes. “Toll” means a charge by the phone companies for making calls that go outside of your city or local area. Therefore, “toll free” must mean that the calls are free of charge, right?

Actually, toll free is a misnomer. What that term means is that the calls are free for the calling party, who normally pays the toll charges on long distance calls. With a toll free number, the charges are automatically reversed. The caller gets a free call. The person who owns the toll free number gets charged for any incoming calls.

To get a toll free number assigned to you, you have to order one specifically. You can easily do that online from companies that specialize in marketing toll free numbers. There are two different types of toll free calling plans. You can pay a small fee for the number plus a small maintenance charge each month plus the cost of incoming calls by the minute. The other option is to pay a fixed fee each month for use of the toll free number regardless of how many or few calls you receive or how long you talk.

Toll free numbers are easily identified by their prefixes or area codes. The original toll free numbers all used the 800 prefix. Customers call you at your toll free number of 1-800-NXX-XXXX. The NXX-XXXX is your unique toll free number. As long as you are paying for the number, all calls will come to you. If you decide to give up the number, it will eventually be assigned to someone else.

Just how do you get those toll free calls? They come in on whatever phone you assign them to. Unlike a regular phone line, a toll free number isn’t assigned to a particular wired connection or wireless phone. Instead, you assign a “ring-to” number to the toll free number. When a toll free call comes in, it will ring to the phone number that you have specified. That can come in handy if you won’t be near your office phone but are expecting an important call. Change the ring-to number to have your toll free calls sent to your cell phone or other phone. The only thing you can’t do is have one toll free number call another. The ring-to number has to be a real phone line.

Toll free numbers have become so popular that other area codes beyond 800 have also been assigned for toll free service. These include 888, 877, 866 and 855. You can choose any of these prefixes for your toll free number since they all work the same way.

Just where do you go to get these toll free numbers? Kall8 offers ready to use toll free numbers starting at $2 each, with a $2 monthly fee. That’s affordable for any business or independent professional. Incoming calls cost 6.9 cents per minute from most states. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii have an extra surcharge.

If you’d prefer an unlimited toll free number, they are just $49 per month each from iTeleCenter and include features such as voicemail and online faxing. This service also includes a 14 day free trial to get you started.

May 20th, Endangered Species Day: A Coast-to-Coast Guide to Endangered Species

 Map showing the distribution of the endangered desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) in western North America (adapted from Germano and others, 1994), from the USGS publication “Modeling Habitat of the Desert Tortoise in the Mojave and Parts of the Sonoran Deserts of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona,” Open-File Report 2009-1102 http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1102/pdf/ofr20091102.pdf

Now that summer vacation time is almost upon us, and for those luckiest amongst us who might be able to break away and take a road trip to one of the U.S. National Parks or other public lands, there is a lot of information out there on where to see rare and endangered species in the wild.  The New York Times just published an article about this in their Travel section at http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/travel/endangered-species-travel-guide.html?nl=todaysheadline

 Parks in the Pacific West and the Southeast Regions have the greatest number of threatened and endangered species.  This table displays parks with the most listed species.  Not only do these areas of the country have great biologic diversity, but many of these areas have been significantly affected by invasive, non-native species and human development.   Source: National Parks Service

An interesting sidebar to the article was a listing of many websites (mainly Federal, with some non-profit conservation organizations) that have compiled databases of endangered species, some of which are suitable for GISc mapping and analysis.  For those of you who are always looking for accurate species data to map and analyze, check out some of these sources. 

            And, on May 20^th, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will observe Endangered Species Day to recognize conservation efforts underway across the nation aimed at helping America’s threatened and endangered species.  As part of the celebration, the Service and the Endangered Species Coalition are cosponsoring events around the country to focus public support on rare and imperiled species.  http://www.fws.gov/endangered/about/ep_10_2011.html

http://www.nature.nps.gov/biology/endangeredspecies/

National Parks Services endangered species database

http://www.iucnredlist.org/

International Union for the Conservation of Nature

The document contains several sections, providing guidance on how to search the web site, how to navigate through the species fact sheets, how to save searches and export data from the site, and where to find and download GIS data for amphibians and mammals.

As many of you know, these creatures are very near and dear to my heart, and so I am including some more info on the Desert Tortoise as an example of some of the data that is available. 
Mojave Desert Tortoise found in Piute Valley in Clark County, Nevada (Kenneth E. Nussear, 2005)

Desert Tortoise Critical Habitat  Gopherus agassizii

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service designated habitat critical to the survival and recovery of the Mojave populations of the desert tortoise in 1994. Critical Habitat Units (yellow) were designated in California, Nevada, Utah and in Arizona north and west of the Grand Canyon. The blue area in the west is the Desert Tortoise Natural Area and blue area in the south is Joshua Tree National Park.   http://www.tortoise.org/conservation/criticalhabitat.html

Distribution of desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) presence observations at sites in the Mojave Desert and parts of the Sonoran Desert of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Solid circles indicate records of one or more observations of live or dead tortoises. The dashed line indicates the study area boundary for the habitat model. Major highways are indicated by blue lines, and urban areas are indicated by gray shaded areas.

From the USGS publication “Modeling Habitat of the Desert Tortoise in the Mojave and Parts of the Sonoran Deserts of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona,” Open-File Report 2009-1102 http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1102/pdf/ofr20091102.pdf

This, by the way, is an excellent document which fully describes their modeling methodology and results. Very useful for researchers contemplating similar biogeographical analyses.
 

Array of variables used to predict desert tortoise habitat.  Environmental variables were generally related to four categories of influence on the landscape and were hypothesized to influence tortoise ecology/habitat potential through a variety of mechanisms.

Spatial representation of the predicted habitat potential index values for desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) in the Mojave and parts of the Sonoran Deserts of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. White patches within the study area indicate areas where no environmental data were available for one or more layers. The Maxent model output used to develop this figure available as an ESRI ASCII GRID file at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1102/ 
The full report, data, and model can be downloaded from http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1102/