Dial time is the time between the dialer sending the request to the phone network and the respondent's phone starting to ring; in other words, the time the phone network takes to route the call to the respondent. This time is not insignificant with a mean of around two or three seconds.

The dial time for Project B was generally longer, probably due to the larger geographical area in the USA where the survey was being conducted. The standard deviation is relatively high indicating some variation in the dial time. Most calls start ringing within about four seconds, but a small percentage of calls can take significantly longer, as is evident from the number of small bars in the following charts and the maximum dial times of 22 and 30 seconds that have been recorded.

A separate analysis of the Project A data was performed to examine how the dial time varied depending on the number that was being dialed. There is a considerable amount of variation: