The decision to use a 193-bit frame was made in 1958. To allow for the identification of information bits within a frame, two alternatives were considered. Assign (a) just one extra bit, or (b) additional eight bits per frame. The 8-bit choice is cleaner, resulting in a 200-bit frame, twenty-five 8-bit channels, of which 24 are traffic and one 8-bit channel available for operations, administration, and maintenance (OA&M). AT&T chose the single bit per frame not to reduce the required bit rate (1.544 vs 1.6 Mbit/s), but because AT&T Marketing worried that "if 8 bits were chosen for OA&M function, someone would then try to sell this as a voice channel and you wind up with nothing."