Originally posted by: GeekDrew
There are quite a few reasons why it might be set up that way. More than likely, whoever configured the dial plan on your corporate phone system is just handing off digits to the phone company after appropriating an outside line. If that's the case, it's up to the phone company's requirements as to whether or not you dial 1.
Also, if your phone is transmitting digits on-the-fly rather than all-at-once, your phone system has to have some kind of programming that tells it when to secure an outside line & etc (usually). If I picked up the phone, got a dial tone, and dialed 513-215-0000, would the phone assume that it's an inside call, and place the connection after the number of digits that signify an internal extension? Or, would it wait until some period of time has lapsed, then make a judgment call and say that you're done dialing, and to secure an outside line, determine whether or not '1' has to be added to the beginning, which trunks to route it on, etc... for smaller phone systems and for companies without someone who knows what they are doing writing the dialing plan, it can be a nightmare.
Also, using digit 9 to signify 'outside line' is stupid IMO... use 8. I've seen *WAY* too many people dial 911 unintentionally.
Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf
Yup, but this is also why most of us just dial the long distance method 8+1+area code+number for anything just do we don't have to deal with it.
That may work at your company, but it won't at many (perhaps even most).