Cut Out the Middle Man:
The Benefits and Costs of Direct Inward Dialing
By Chick Chickering
Do you ever wonder how a company with 50 or 100 employees can afford to provide a separate phone line for each person? Each person has an individual telephone number that allows calls to connect directly to their desk. After all, 50 lines at about $20.00 per line can add up to a pretty big monthly phone bill!
Well, the secret is that there really aren't 50 separate phone lines. The company requires far fewer lines because of a magic process called Direct Inward Dialing (DID).
Here's how DID works.
The telephone company that provides local service (the dial tone provider) assigns a block of 50 or 100 numbers for the organization. The telephone company provides a digital service, called T1 service, to send all the calls to the office telephone system. A single T1 circuit can provide the equivalent of up to 24 telephone lines that can handle 24 simultaneous conversations.
When a telephone call comes for one of 50 or 100 numbers assigned to the PBX (telephone system), the telephone company sends special digits (called DID signaling) to identify which person should get the call. The call can actually arrive on any one of the "lines" associated with the T1 circuit. The telephone system then directs the call to the appropriate extension.
The T1 circuit provides a number of advantages in addition to the DID signaling. The quality of the telephone call is superior to that of plain old telephone lines because the call is sent over a digital circuit, eliminating hum and noise.
Another significant advantage of a T1 circuit is that it can be split to provide a combination of voice and high-speed data for Internet connections. This is a very cost-effective way to bring high-speed Internet service to a company.
For more information, ask your VoiceWare sales representative about the many advantages of Direct Inward Dialing and digital T1 service.
