Once I had the phone number for dialing into the switch, I could do pretty much anything I liked. If I wanted to have a series of conversations with someone in, say, Japan, I’d find an unassigned phone number, take it over, add call forwarding, and then activate it to forward any incoming calls anywhere I wanted. Then, from my cell phone, I could make a local call to the previously unassigned phone number and have a clear, direct connection from the switch straight to the guy in Japan, instead of having to deal with an unreliable international cell phone connection.