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Glossary

DID Number

A DID number (Direct Inward Dialing) is a telephone number that routes inbound calls directly to a specific endpoint — a person, a queue, or, increasingly, a voice AI agent — without passing through a switchboard, receptionist, or extension menu. The term comes from the PBX era, when companies bought ranges of numbers that dialed “directly inward” to individual desks; today it’s the standard industry word for any virtual phone number you can point at a system of your choosing.

In voice AI deployments, DIDs are how agents get a presence on the public telephone network. Each DID is provisioned in a specific country and type — local (tied to a city or area code), national, mobile, or toll-free — and carries that country’s regulatory baggage: identity verification, address requirements, and emergency-services obligations vary widely by jurisdiction. Availability and price vary just as widely: a US local number costs a dollar or two per month, while numbers in some countries cost 10x that and require documented local presence.

Why it matters for voice agents

DIDs are the addressing layer of any phone-facing AI deployment. The number a caller dials (delivered in SIP signaling as the DNIS) is typically what routes the call to the right agent configuration — one platform account might map hundreds of DIDs to different agents, languages, or campaigns. For outbound calls, the DID is the caller ID your customers see, which directly affects answer rates and trust; local-presence dialing (calling from a number in the customer’s own area code) depends on holding DIDs in the right regions.

Where your DIDs come from is a strategic choice. Platform-provisioned numbers are fast to set up but lock your number inventory to the vendor; porting hundreds of established numbers later is slow and risky. The alternative is keeping numbers with your existing carrier and connecting via BYOC and SIP trunking, so the AI platform never owns your inventory. International coverage is the other differentiator — many platforms resell US-centric inventory, while telecom-native platforms provision DIDs in 100+ countries directly.

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