Telecoms glossary • T
Toll-free numbers (0800 and 0860)
0800 is free to the caller and billed to you. 0860 splits it. 087 is not toll-free at all, whatever the brochure says.
What is a toll-free number?in South African business telephony
1. A toll-free number is one the receiving business pays for instead of the caller. In South Africa that is the 080 range, which ICASA’s numbering plan designates for toll free services with no charge to the caller irrespective of the network used. The 086 range shares the cost between caller and business.
2. The prefix decides who is billed, so choosing between 0800, 0860 and 0861 is a commercial decision about how much cost you are willing to take off the caller.
Who pays for what
Four prefixes get called toll-free in conversation and only one of them is. This is the table to settle the argument with.
| Prefix | Telkom product name | The caller pays | The business pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0800 | FreeCall | Nothing, on any network | The whole call |
| 0860 | ShareCall | A local-rate call | The balance |
| 0861 | MaxiCall | The full national-rate call | Nothing per minute |
| 087 | VoIP number range | A standard call to a landline number | Nothing per minute |
The highlighted cells mark where a party carries no per-minute cost, which is not the same as which prefix you should buy. An 0800 number is the right answer when you are paying to remove friction from a support or sales line, and an expensive mistake on a line nobody needed to make free.
087 numbers cause the most confusion because they are non-geographic and therefore feel like a service number. They are not toll-free in any sense. ICASA’s numbering plan lists 087 as released for voice over the internet services, and the caller is billed as they would be for any ordinary landline number.
What ICASA actually designates
The regulator allocates ranges, not products. The Numbering Plan Regulations designate 080 for toll free services, 086 for inbound services, 087 for voice over the internet services and 089 for mass calling services, with 085 protected and 088 held for future non-geographic services.
Two things follow from that, and both are routinely got wrong in sales material. First, 0860 and 0861 are commercial products inside the 086 inbound-services range rather than separate ICASA designations, which is why the charging split is set by the operator and the tariff rather than by regulation. Second, the toll-free promise on 080 is regulatory: the numbering plan states that no charge is incurred by the callers, irrespective of the electronic communications network used.
That last point used to be untrue in practice. Until the rules were tightened in 2016, mobile operators could and did charge airtime for calls to 0800 numbers, so a business advertising a toll-free line was quietly costing mobile callers money. If anyone still tells you an 0800 number is only free from a landline, they are working from a decade-old script.
Getting one, and keeping it
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Pick the prefix by intent
Support and complaints lines where friction costs you customers point at 0800. General enquiry lines where a shared cost is acceptable point at 0860. If you simply want a national-looking number and no per-minute exposure, you are describing 0861 or an ordinary 087 number.
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Buy it from a licensed provider
Inbound numbering is sold by licensed electronic communications service providers, including VoIP and Cloud PBX providers, rather than obtained from ICASA directly.
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Port the number you already advertise
Non-geographic porting became a working reality on 7 March 2022, covering 0800, 0860, 0861, 0862 and 087 numbers. A number printed on your vehicles is no longer a reason to stay with a provider. Our number porting guide covers the paperwork.
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Point it at something that answers
Route it to an IVR, a queue or a hunt group. An 0800 number ringing an unattended handset is a line item that generates nothing.
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Get the rates in writing before you sign
Ask for the monthly rental and the inbound per-minute rate split by originating network, because calls that start on a mobile are commonly rated higher than calls that start on a landline. Ask whether abandoned and unanswered calls are billed.
Treat it as a marketing cost, because it is
An 0800 number is the only telephony line item that gets more expensive the better your advertising performs. That is the intended trade, but it means the number belongs in the marketing budget with a monthly ceiling and a report attached, not in the telecoms budget as a fixed cost.
The practical version: run separate numbers for separate campaigns so you can see which one produced the calls, check the itemised inbound bill in the first month against what you were quoted, and confirm before signing that the number is portable out. Portability is the leverage that keeps the renewal conversation honest.
About this entry
Definitions are written for South African business buyers and checked against primary sources – provider documentation, standards bodies and ICASA – not vendor marketing. Reviews are independent and sponsors are always disclosed. Read our editorial policy and scoring methodology.
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