Thursday, June 9, 2011

Today, CallFire released a new feature which enables you to search for phone numbers not only by area code, but by local rate center, otherwise known as local exchange. For anyone unfamiliar with this industry term, the exchange is basically the first three digits in a phone number after the area code. A rate center is a determined geographic area used by local exchange carriers to set rate boundaries for billing and issuing phone numbers. Typically, a call within a rate center is a local call, while a call from one rate center to another may be considered long distance.

For this reason, CallFire clients have requested the ability to search available phone numbers, not only by area code, but by area code and local exchange. And now they can.

Simply log in to your CallFire admin account, and under "Numbers" choose "Buy Toll-Free or Local."

buy local phone numbers

You'll notice a new button that says "Search for numbers local to..." When you hit that button, you'll see this:

Search for local phone numbers by rate center

You can then input not only a requested area code, but a local exchange. For example:

Buy phone numbers by Local Rate Center

It should be noted that you may see results that do not match the digits you inputted. For example, when I inputted 310 area code with 468 exchange, I was served a list of 424 area code phone numbers with the 999 exchange.

Results

This simply means that these phone numbers are, in fact, within the same local rate center as the one you requested. If you want the exact digits, simply hit "Show more numbers" to see if there are any more numbers available that more closely match the numbers you inputted. In this case, there are.

For more information on CallFire phone numbers, please visit this previous post: Exactly how do CallFire phone numbers work?