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In telephony, the long-distance operator is a telephone operator available to assist with making long distance telephone calls (or toll calls in British English), answering billing questions, making collect calls and other functions.
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In telephony, the long-distance operator is a telephone operator available to assist with making long distance telephone calls (or toll calls in British English), answering billing questions, making collect calls and other functions.
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Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed in the Bell System in the United States, and became known under the trademark Touch-Tone for use in push-button telephones supplied to telephone customers, starting in 1963. DTMF is standardized as ITU-T Recommendation Q.23. It is also known in the UK as MF4.
Throughout the 20th century, telephone switchboards were devices used to connect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between users or other switchboards. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, and was operated by switchboard operators who used electrical cords or switches to establish the connections.
A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. This allowed the user, referred to as a "phreaker", to surreptitiously place long-distance calls that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of the phone network.
The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international calling code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate in the NANP.
Operator assistance refers to a telephone call in which the calling party requires an operator to provide some form of assistance in completing the call. This may include telephone calls made from pay phones, calls placed station-to-station, person-to-person, collect, third number calls, calls billed to a credit card, and certain international calls which cannot be dialed directly. The telephone operator may also be able to assist with determining what kind of technical difficulties are occurring on a phone line, to verify whether a line is busy, or left off the hook, and break in on a phone line to request for the caller to clear the line for an incoming call. The latter service is often utilized by emergency police. In addition, operators are often a first point of contact for the elderly wanting information on the current date and time.
A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party.
Subscriber trunk dialling (STD), also known as subscriber toll dialing, is a telephone numbering plan feature and telecommunications technology for the dialling of trunk calls by telephone subscribers without the assistance from switchboard operators.
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators. These consist of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all interconnected by switching centers which allow most telephones to communicate with each other.
In the early days of telephony, companies used manual telephone switchboards, and switchboard operators connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks. They were gradually phased out and replaced by automated systems, first those allowing direct dialing within a local area, then for long-distance and international direct dialing.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
Prepaid telephone calls are a popular way of making telephone calls which allow the caller to control spending without making a commitment with the telephone company.
In telecommunications, a long-distance call (U.S.) or trunk call is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area. Long-distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate than local calls. The term is not necessarily synonymous with placing calls to another telephone area code.
International telephone calls are those made between different countries. These telephone calls are processed by international gateway exchanges (switches). Charges for these calls were high initially but declined greatly during the 20th century due to advances in technology liberalization. Originally they were placed via long-distance operators. The calls were transmitted by cable, communications satellite, radio, and more recently, fiber optics and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). International direct dialling was introduced in the 1970s, so calls can be dialed by country code without an operator.
A class-4, or tandem, telephone switch is a U.S. telephone company central office telephone exchange used to interconnect local exchange carrier offices for long distance communications in the public switched telephone network.
PEnnsylvania 6-5000 is a telephone number in New York City, written in the 2L+5N format that was common from about 1930 into the 1960s. The number is best known from the 1940 hit song "Pennsylvania 6-5000", a swing jazz and pop standard recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Its owner, the Hotel Pennsylvania, claims it to be the oldest continuing telephone number in New York City. The hotel opened on January 25, 1919, but the exact age of the telephone number and the veracity of the hotel's claim are unknown. For many years, callers to 212-736-5000 were greeted with the hotel's phone system recorded greeting that includes a portion of the song but the hotel did not reopen after being closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is scheduled to be torn down.
Telephone numbers in Taiwan use a system of area codes, beginning 02 to 08. The leading digit(s) following the area code denote the network operator. Mobile numbers begin 09. The international code for calls into Taiwan is 886.
Telephone numbers in Russia are under a unified numbering plan with Kazakhstan, both of which share the international code +7. Historically, +7 was used as the country calling code for all of the Soviet Union. Following the Soviet break-up, all of its former republics, save for Russia and Kazakhstan, switched to new country codes. Following Abkhazia's secession from Georgia, Abkhazia switched to the Russian telephone codes +7 840 for landlines and +7 940 for mobile phones, though it still can be reached via the Georgian telephone code +995 44.
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a fixed-line telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or other public and private networks.
The original North American area codes were established by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) in the immediate post-WWII period. Creating a comprehensive and universal, continent-wide telephone numbering plan was a basic requirement for nationwide Operator Toll Dialing which had the goal of speeding the connecting times for long-distance calling by eliminating intermediary telephone operators. It had the eventual benefit of direct distance dialing (DDD) by telephone subscribers. It established a uniform destination addressing and call routing system for all telephone networks in North America that had become an essential public service.
A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital systems to establish telephone calls between subscribers.