The Telephone Services

Telephone Services

In the United States and Canada, universal service was a stated goal of the telephone industry during the first half of the 20th century—every household was to have its own telephone. This goal has now been essentially reached, but before it became a reality, the only access many people had to the telephone was through pay (or public) telephones, usually placed in a neighborhood store. 

A pay telephone is a telephone that may have special hardware to count and safeguard coins or, more recently, to read the information off credit cards or calling cards. Additional equipment at the exchange responds to signals from the pay phone to indicate to the operator or automatic exchange how much money has been deposited or to which account the call will be charged. Today the pay phone still exists, but it usually serves as a convenience rather than as primary access to the telephone network.

Computer-controlled exchange switches make it possible to offer a variety of extra services to both the residential and the business customer. Some services to which users may subscribe at extra cost are call waiting, in which a second incoming call, instead of receiving a busy signal, hears normal ringing while the subscriber hears a beep superimposed on the conversation in progress; and three-way calling, in which a second outgoing call may be placed while one is already in progress so that three subscribers can then talk to each other. 

Some services available to users within exchanges with the most-modern transmission systems are: caller ID, in which the calling party’s number is displayed to the receiver (with the calling party’s permission—subscribers can elect to make their telephone number hidden from caller-ID services) on special equipment before the call is answered; and repeat dialing, in which a called number, if busy, will be automatically redialed for a certain amount of time.

For residential service, voice mail can either be purchased from the telephone company or can be obtained by purchasing an answering machine. An answering machine usually contains a regular telephone set along with the ability to detect incoming calls and to record and play back messages, with either an audiotape or a digital system. After a preset number of rings, the answering machine plays a prerecorded message inviting the caller to leave a message to be recorded.

Toll-free 800 numbers are a very popular service. Calls made to a telephone number that has an 800 area code are billed to the called party rather than to the caller. This is very useful to any business that uses mail-order sales, because it encourages potential customers to call to place orders. A less expensive form of 800-number service is now available for residential subscribers.

In calling telephone numbers with area codes of 900, the caller is billed an extra charge, often on a per-minute basis. The use of these numbers has ranged from collecting contributions for charitable organizations, to businesses that provide information for which the caller must pay.

While the United States and Canada are the most advanced countries in the world in telephone-service technologies, most other industrialized nations are not far behind. An organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), works to standardize telephone service throughout the world. 

Without its coordinating activities, International Direct Distance Dialing (a service that provides the ability to place international calls without the assistance of an operator) would have been extremely difficult to implement. Among its other services, the ITU creates an environment in which a special service introduced in one country can be quickly duplicated elsewhere.