Patent ID: 8144847

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining a database of a plurality of direct inward dial telephone numbers, including a subset of the direct inward dial telephone numbers which are available for assignment; receiving, through a website, an application from a customer for an alias telephone number to be associated with a customer telephone number, the application including a custom string of characters and requesting the custom string of characters to be associated with the alias telephone number; processing the application, the processing including assigning to the customer an assigned alias telephone number selected from the subset of available telephone numbers which are available for assignment and associating the assigned alias number with the customer telephone number; and receiving a telephone call from a third party to the assigned alias telephone number and routing the telephone call from the assigned alias telephone number to the customer telephone number, the routing including replacing an automatic number identification of the telephone call from the third party with the custom string of characters received from the customer based on the request, thereby informing the customer that the telephone call was a call to the assigned alias telephone number.