A TELEPHONE OPERATOR

A telephone operator is either

* a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls (called reversed-charge calls in the UK), calls which are billed to a credit card, station-to-station and person-to-person calls, and certain international calls which cannot be dialed directly.

* a telephone company offering telephone services to subscribers. For example, users of a mobile phone will register with a mobile phone operator to receive GSM services.

With the development of computerized telephone dialing systems, many telephone calls which previously required a live operator can be placed automatically by the calling party without additional human intervention. Before the advent of automatic exchanges, an operator's assistance was required for anything other than calling telephones across a shared party line. Callers spoke to an operator at a switching office who then literally connected their wire to the proper circuit in order to complete the call. Being in complete control of the call, the operator was in a position to listen to private conversations. Direct Dial (DDD) systems were developed in the 1920s to reduce labor costs as usage increased, and to ensure privacy to the customer. As phone systems became more sophisticated, this sort of direct intervention by the telephone operator was needed less and less.

As well as those employed by the public networks, operators are also needed at private branch exchanges to answer incoming calls and connect them to the correct extension. The term "telephone operator" is used broadly, and can entail a range of responsibilities, from performing wake-up calls from a Hotel Switchboard, to responding to medical emergencies, overhead paging, and disaster response coordination in medical facilities. Well trained operators with a variety of skills usually command the best positions in this field which generally falls under the umbrella of telecommunications.

An operator-assisted call is one in which the calling party places a telephone call which 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 person-to-person call is an operator assisted call in which the calling party wants to speak to a specific party and not simply to anyone who answers. The caller is not charged for the call unless the requested party can be reached. This method was popular when telephone calls were relatively expensive.

Fax machines and modems, due to their inability to ask for a party by name, use a technique called station-to-station. Station-to-station is a method of placing a telephone call, with or without assistance, in which the calling party agrees to talk to whoever answers the telephone. With the introduction of direct dial telephone service and the subsequent drop in the price of long distance telephone calls, person-to-person service is virtually unheard of.