A colleague who works for just this kind of subsidiary says that it is now accustomed to having its telephone charges questioned by the parent company's accountants on a regular basis. However changes are happening very rapidly, as technologies like DSL and cable modems roll out to ever more users around the world. Moving from a permanent connection back to dial-up is like stepping into the Dark Ages. Even with a reasonably sophisticated proxy and mail server configuration, the arrangement is much less convenient. Whenever I am working at a small business client that still uses modem dial-up via a proxy for Web access, I marvel at the patience of the users, as they open up the browser and wait what seems an interminable time for the modem on the server to do its job.
Mobile communications are even worse.
However while the ability to connect is incredibly useful when working away from the office, the service can be almost painful to use. It is hard to believe that in 1990 I used to think that a 9600bps modem connection was amazingly quick. The business case for a permanent connection from even the smallest office to the Internet gets ever stronger as competition for business gets ever tougher. Even our smaller business clients who still have scheduled dial-up connections can send a question on one connection and receive the reply on the subsequent access. I appreciate that much of this argument will be unnecessary for many readers.