Does anyone have experience if this is possible, and which Thai phone providers offer this type of service?

The concept works like this:

Our business needs to provide toll free numbers (1800 numbers, 020-numbers) in two overseas countries (the US and Sweden) as a service to customers in those countries, to facilitate contacting our business, which is operated in Thailand. The billing for the calls would be entirely in Thailand. Sort of like an automatic, permanent collect call service. This is possible where other countries are involved, but would the same thing be possible with a Thai phone company?

Have already tried to contact TT&T and TOT customer service, but neither of them seem to grasp the type of service we need, so I thought it might be quicker to pose the question here, in case somebody is already using a similar package.

Thank you for your time.

I looked into this myself a little while back. I know BT in the UK did this, as well as a bunch of other smaller Telco's. Can't remember the exact link, but it may be a worthwhile start for you.

Cheers Samran.

For the benefit of anybody else who might be interested in the future: The service is available from CAT (contact them directly, do not waste time with the Call Centers of TOT and TT&T as they do not know anything and just keep transferring you around to new people who still do not understand what you mean, until you are ready to strangle somebody).

The service is referred to as "ITFS" by CAT.

The application fee for the service is 1000 baht, and there is also a running monthly fee of 1000 baht. The calls are billed according to the rate that applies from Thailand to the overseas country in question (the other way round would be more logical, but this is not the case).

The rate applied by CAT is the 001 international dialling prefix rate, not the cheaper 007 rate.

Our business needs to provide toll free numbers (1800 numbers, 020-numbers) in two overseas countries (the US and Sweden) as a service to customers in those countries, to facilitate contacting our business, which is operated in Thailand. The billing for the calls would be entirely in Thailand. Sort of like an automatic, permanent collect call service. This is possible where other countries are involved, but would the same thing be possible with a Thai phone company?

Have you thought about using a US VOIP provider, there's many that can do a toll free number redirection service.It would be substantially cheaper. Why does the billing have to be in Thailand?

I have a friend that uses this company for a 1800 number for his sales enquires in the US & UK. He's pretty happy with it , I'm not sure on the costs.

Edited April 4, 200620 yr by Simmo

Thank you for the tip Simmo; don't want to sound too much like the man on your avatar, but I had actually already considered and looked into that () - it is definitely feasible too.

However, at this date, VOIP call quality is still not as reliable as fixed lines, and this particular business needs nothing short of excellent quality, so it will be worth the extra cost.