Are three digits too much to dial? Apparently

Angus Kidman
Friday, 08 December 2006 06:18

IT Industry - Strategy

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but when you've reach the point where dialling an extra three digits is deemed to be too much trouble, things have undoubtedly gone too far.

At a briefing on integrating and managing voice and data networks in Sydney yesterday, CA enterprise systems management business unit director Simon Barnier told the tale of a European customer that decided, as part of a rollout of a new IP network, to change its internal phone system so people could dial between offices using four-digit numbers, rather than the seven-digit number system imposed by its old PABX.

As a result of this apparently simple change, call volumes went through the roof. Previously there had been 100 inter-office calls a week, but once the numbers got shorter, that shot up to 5000.

Barnier offered up this information as a warning to IT managers to carefully plan and measure before rolling out new networks, since such changes are not always predictable, and that's a very valid point. I can't help thinking, though, that the employees of the company in question must be extremely lazy, quite strange, or possibly both.

Sure, a four-digit number should be easier to remember than a seven-digit sequence. On the other hand, with any kind of half-decent company intranet, looking up the correct number would not take that long. And what about speed dial facilities?

Even more remarkably, some quick calculations show that the staff are actually doing more dialling despite the short numbers, as the total volume of keystrokes has risen from 700 a week to 20,000. So their apparent laziness was obviously just a facade. How much other work aren't they getting done? Forget network tracking, a total staff revamp appears to be more in order.