Why is there a number one in front of toll free numbers?”
The number one (1) is the country code for the North American Numbering Plan, so yes you pretty much answered your own question — at least in respect to dialing the 1 + ten digit number. Under the original plan, before the world ran out of numbers, there were specific digits that would qualify for use based on purpose. The leading digit of the call being a 1 followed by either seven or ten digits gave the phone system both a sense of how many digits to listen for and how to route the call based on those digits. If I-Rex is answering this question, I’m sure he’ll be able to explain it better then I can. Until recently, area codes were only permitted to have a specific set of numbers, with the center digit only allowed to be a 0 or 1 (so 201 or 415 for example). The actual telephone number prefix was the restricted to be a 2 or higher for the first digit, as were the following two digits restricted from being 11. The last four digits could be anything. The net result of this prior numbe
