The Complexities Of Toll Free Calling In India

With access lines in over 50 countries, we strive to deliver a superior conference experience with global reach. From years of this effort we have amassed considerable experience with the complexities of the global telephone network. I’d like to share a few tips to help meeting hosts engage participants in India as smoothly as easily as possible.

In certain parts of the world, including India, we offer toll free access numbers. Toll free numbers are a convenience, allowing meeting participants to avoid incurring costly long distance charges from their local telco or mobile carrier.

However, Indian toll free numbers bring with them a little complication of their own. All toll free number in India are commonly dialed in the following manner;

• 000-800-XXX-XXX
• 000-800-XXX-XXXX

It’s common for Indian carriers to block international long distance dialing. This practice also blocks dialing to perfectly valid Indian toll free numbers, including the ZipDX access number for India. People trying to join a meeting in such a situation hear an error message reporting that they have dialed “an invalid number.” This is, of course, very frustrating.

The generic error message loosely implies that the access line is dysfunctional. When we see trouble reports about such occurrences our system logs don’t even show that the participant tried to join the meeting. The call was blocked by the local phone system or the mobile carrier. In essence, it never left their doorstep.

While local solutions are possible, it’s not always practical to have the participant in India address the problem at their end. Fortunately, there are some things that the meeting host can do to bring the participant into the meeting.

An Immediate Solution

The fast and easy solution is to have ZipDX call-out to the participant in India. This must be done by the meeting Host.

There are two ways to dial out to the participant;

1. From The Conference Dashboard

If the meeting host is logged into www.ZipDX.com they can access the Dashboard for the conference in-progress. The Host Controls on the dashboard has a Dialout button. This tool allows them to enter an phone number in the world, bringing that person directly into the meeting.

2. From The Host’s Keypad

If the meeting host is not able to access the conference dashboard they can still access the Dialout feature using the keypad of their phone.

• They dial *98 to invoke Dialout
• They’ll hear a prompt asking them to enter the phone number of the participant
• They then enter that person’s phone number followed by the # key.

The host should enter the number just as if they were calling the participant from the US. For example; 011 91 XX XXXX XXXX#

The conference will hear ringing, and when the person answers they will be placed directly into the conference.

A Long Term Solution

For the host to bring the participant in India into the meeting is fine on occasion. If that participant attends many meetings this can be impractical for the meeting hosts. In that case, the participant should investigate the root of the problem locally with the appropriate people, either their mobile carrier or company IT staff. Typically, all that is required is to enable international dialing from their phone.

Alternatively, they could add their phone number to their ZipDX profile, enabling the Call-Me setting. That will cause ZipDX to automatically call them at the start of any meeting to which they were invited.