One number routing to nearest POP

[great_canadian]

I don't know much about how these types of phone numbers work or if you even have them in the USA but here is my suggestion:

Here in Canada we have many companies that have one phone number that is local to anyone who dials it regardless of where in the country they are. For example

- Pizza Delivery Franchises, I call one number, these numbers don't even have an area code they are just 7 digits and it doesn't matter if I am in Toronto or Halifax or Vancouver the call is local for me and gets routed to the franchise location nearest to me. If there is several, a prompt #1 for North location #2 for South location. The call is then connected and I am talking to the guy down the street. We also have this feature for other numbers like #TAXI and you get connected to the first available taxi service in the city you are calling from(obviously registered vendors).

You get the point......anyway these specialty numbers probably cost big money, but I have seen these numbers with classic 10 digit format proceeded by a 1. So 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX doesn't have to be an 800 number to be toll free and then it could be routed to a local POP number for that person. The iphone could even provide the location with its GPS. I don't know if you would still need to have all the individual POPs established to route to, or if your own capabilities for call routing through your server would let you register just the single toll free number and then your server can take over from there. Right now I am in Red Deer, Alberta, and both Edmonton and Calgary are long distance calls.

Again I don't know how phone routing takes places so this may be not feasible let me know either way I would love to see it implemented if can work for you.