Collect Call
Operator assistance refers to service provided by a telephone operator to the calling party of a telephone call. This included telephone calls made from pay phones, calls placed station-to-station, person-to-person, or collect, third-number calls, calls billed to credit cards, and certain international calls which could not be dialed directly.
Operators could also assist with diagnosing technical difficulties, verifying whether a line was busy (busy line verification, or BLV), or left off the hook, or breaking in on a live call to ask the caller to clear the line for an incoming call (busy line interruption, or BLI). The latter service was often utilized by emergency police. In addition, operators were often a first point of contact for the elderly wanting information on the current date and time.
Before the advent of emergency telephone numbers, operators identified and connected emergency calls to the correct emergency services. Directory assistance was also part of the operator's job.
In the early days of telephones all calls were connected by an operator. Later, local calls could typically be dialed directly, but long-distance and international calls had to be connected by an operator, often subject to a minimum charge, typically for three minutes. Eventually it became possible to direct-dial all calls, but operator assistance continued to be available, often at higher cost, for all calls; in the US Bell System an operator-assisted call carried a 50% premium for the first three minutes.
Operator-assisted calls were initially handled at telephone switchboards which were subsequently replaced with computer assisted systems such as Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) consoles beginning in the late 1960s, which automated many aspects of call setup while still requiring operator involvement for billing verification, announcements, and customer interaction.
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