[VLM]

The system is built to tolerate 25 people calling in the same accident on the interstate or 100s of people calling in a plane crash. Last specs I heard around '10 was about a half million calls per day country wide. There are about 25 million small businesses in the country (accurate to only about one sig fig). If you assume a business tests a new phone system once per decade and there are about 10K days in a decade (close enough not to matter) then there will be about 2500 test calls per day out of 500000 total calls or basically its a rounding error.

Now on the other hand, don't be a jerk. They're busy at certain times of day and they kinda expect people to make test calls during relatively boring business hours but not during rush hour or at bar close time. Don't be making test calls while a hurricane is hitting the city or while a t-storm is passing thru or a presidential visit or wildfires are kinda nearby, etc.

I've done this helping out as part of PBX installs (admittedly a long time ago) and just be calm and clear and polite when verifying the address routing and remember to say "thanks" and its not a big deal.

[wrboyce]

> ...there are about 10K days in a decade (close enough not to matter)...

That is quite a bit off, there are ~3650 days in a decade. If you really wanted to use round numbers, would 5K not have been a better choice?

[VLM]

No, because its harder to estimate the arithmetic in my head with 5K than 10K and when I got the result it was so utterly extreme that I felt no need to go back and correct. If it was significant rather than a rounding error then I'd have gone back and rerun the numbers.

Also I forgot to mention I used small biz pbx as the most populous estimate because I assumed j.random.ATT cellphone user wouldn't test, one iphone should do about the same as the next