Future of toll dialling

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32787, 11 December 1971, Page 18

Future of toll dialling

(N.Z. Press Association) j WELLINGTON, Dec. 10. J Subscriber toll dialling ■ is to be progressively in-, troduced into the New Zealand telephone sys- < tem, the PostmasterGeneral (Mr McCready) announced in a state-1 ment tonight. This has been approved by i the Cabinet after Post Office experts had carefully looked at the development of the New Zealand tool network. Subscribers will eventually be able to dial throughout the whole of the national network.

Charges for calls beyond the local area will be registered automatically by meters or processes which note details of each call. The telephone service in New Zealand had been developed on flat-rate charges for local service plus toll fees for calls between different- exchanges, Mr McCready said. The local service had beeh progressively converted from

manual to automatic operation, and now 86 per cent of all subscribers in New Zealand had automatic service. The toll service was handled by operators who set up the calls and ticketed them for charging. The cost of handling calls was high, and economics would result from automatic inter-exchange calls. Considerable progress had already been made by incorporating adjacent areas into

single flat-rate groups, Mr McCready said. These widerarea free-calling services and the ability to dial their own calls had been welcomed. “Cabinet recently approved the acceptance of a tender for the supply of cross-bar switching equipment to the New Zealand Post Office for a period of five years,” Mr McCready said. “This equipment is eminently suitable for the development of long-dis-tance subscriber dialling with

automatic message accounting.” Information about each call would be provided in a form suitable for direct input to computer equipment to produce toll bills.

"Subscribers will thus get the same information in their toll bills as is available now, with added economy through increased automation of the billing processes.”

The equipment at a number of major toll switching centres would need to be replaced in the next few years because of obsolescence or inability to extend, and Subscriber Toll Dialling (S.T.D.) would be introduced progressively as existing toll switching equipment required replacement. Expenditure on new toll exchanges would not be incurred merely in order to introduce S.T.D.

"It is visualised that significant progress with the introduction of S.T.D. would be made by the late 19705, but progress will naturally depend on the availability of resources,” said the Minister. “S.T.D. provides very convenient and rapid service. Overseas experience has shown that where subscribers can dial their own calls, the facility proves very popular. "Limited experience in New Zealand of subscriber dialling of toll calls over short distances has shown a general preference by subscribers for dialling their own calls rather than have them handled by an operator. "Cost analysis shows that S.T.D. development is preferable to continued manual operation. The extra capital cost is small, and the annual savings are great,” said Mr McCready.