The DID Fee Is a Carrier Choice, Not a Cost of Service
Every reseller and most wholesale carriers charge a monthly per-DID fee, commonly $0.50 to $1.50 per number, billed flat whether the number generates a minute of traffic or not. At a dialer pool of 500 numbers, that is a silent $300–$750 line item every billing cycle that has nothing to do with calls actually made.
At the underlying carrier layer, that fee does not reflect a real cost-of-service. NANPA (the North American Numbering Plan Administrator) assigns number blocks to authorized carriers in pooled thousand-number allotments. The carrier pays an annual block-administration fee to maintain those blocks, not a per-number monthly rental. What typically appears on a reseller invoice is the conversion of that fixed block-maintenance cost into a per-unit recurring revenue line. It is one of the most consistent margin boosters in wholesale telecom, and it is almost never disclosed before a contract is signed.
The Middle-Layer Markup
When a traffic wholesaler quotes you a DID, they are provisioning a number pulled from an upstream carrier's inventory. The upstream carrier charges the reseller, often well under a quarter per number at volume, and the reseller marks it to retail. Every layer adds a fee. By the time the number hits your invoice, the original cost-of-service has been transformed into a predictable monthly annuity the reseller earns whether your number rings or not.
This is structurally different from sourcing DIDs directly from an originating LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) that holds its own OCN (Operating Company Number) and maintains its own number blocks under NANPA assignment. The LEC's cost base is the block-administration fee, not a per-number rental from someone above them. That distinction determines whether a $0.00 DID structure is sustainable or a bait-and-switch.
Why Volume Flips the Equation
DID economics reverse at meaningful origination volume. When a partner is generating enough per-minute revenue on a trunk, the carrier's block-maintenance cost becomes a rounding error relative to the traffic economics. At that point, charging a per-number monthly fee is a choice, not a necessity. It is the difference between a carrier pricing to cover costs and a reseller pricing to protect a recurring revenue line.
Greenway includes DIDs at $0.00 per number per month for partners at qualifying volume thresholds. Those thresholds are published in our rate deck, not buried in a side letter. The volume structure works the way you would expect from an originating LEC: as traffic grows, per-minute rates compress and DID carrying costs are absorbed entirely. They do not compound.
What Qualifying Volume Actually Looks Like
The short answer: lower than most contact center operators assume. If your dialer is running consistent outbound campaigns, you are likely above the threshold where a DID fee should be zero. The longer answer is a rate-deck conversation, not a list of asterisks. We publish the tiers, we explain the ramp-up window for new trunks before qualifying volume is reached, and we do not retroactively revise terms when a traffic spike pushes you over a threshold. A follow-up piece on this site will walk through the volume-tier math in full, including what happens during ramp-up and how the tiering responds if usage dips below threshold temporarily.
We Run These Economics on Our Own Infrastructure
Greenway holds its own OCN and manages number blocks for internal routing alongside partner traffic. When we built out our own outbound infrastructure, we did not add a DID line item to the internal cost model, we absorbed block-maintenance into the per-minute economics at volume. That is the same structure we offer externally. When we tell you DIDs are included, it is because they are included for us too. There is no upstream DID cost we are passing through and relabeling.
The industry default, charge monthly per number, layer on a network-access surcharge, add regulatory recovery, and hand the customer an invoice they cannot reconcile, exists because most operators never ask to see what the number actually costs the carrier. We think that is the wrong foundation for a carrier relationship. Our rate deck is open. The numbers are what they are.
Integrity in Telecom means the fee structure on page one of the contract matches every invoice that follows. We are your US voice anchor.