Phoneword

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.

Local numbers are also occasionally used, such as +1-514-AUTOBUS or STM-INFO to reach the Société de transport de Montréal,[2] but are constrained by the fact that the first few digits are tied to a geographic location, potentially limiting the available choices based on which telephone exchanges serve a local area.

They are easier to remember than numeric phone numbers; thus, when businesses use them as a direct response tool in their advertising (radio, television, print, outdoor, etc.

[citation needed] A study conducted by Roy Morgan Research in February 2006 indicated that 92% of Australians were familiar with alphanumeric dialling.

The dialing of 1 or 0 instead of I or O in phonewords can lead to misdialed calls; one such typosquatting incident targeted 1-800-HOLIDAY (+1-800-465-4329, the toll-free direct reservations line for Holiday Inn) by subscribing 1-800-H0LIDAY (+1-800-405-4329, the same number with 'o' replaced by 'zero') to a rival vendor which stood to collect a profitable travel agent's commission.

[4] Phonewords were officially introduced into Australia following the release of the appropriate number ranges by the Australian Communications and Media Authority[5] in August 2004.

Proposed ranges for reserve prices for SmartNumbersTM are listed by Australian Communications Authority The types of numbers that are most commonly used include those beginning with the prefixes '1300', and '1800', which are ten digits long, and numbers beginning with '13', which are six digits.

This changed after Roy P. Weber of Bell Labs patented a "Data base communication call processing method"[10] which laid the initial blueprint for construction of the SMS/800 database in 1982 and the portable RespOrg structure in 1993.

As toll-free telephone numbers, vanity 800 numbers support flexible call tracking which allows businesses to determine where their incoming call traffic is coming from, build a database of leads, access demographic information on callers, allocate personnel based on calling patterns, analyze ad campaign results and export data to other programs.

In 1968, the letters were replaced by numbers, but recently phonewords have returned to popularity in Russia.