NATION WIDK AUTOMATIC SWITCHING 829 



Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago and San Francisco 

 and the Bay area. 



The results of this trial have been \'ery encouraging. Subscribers are 

 continuing to dial over 95 per cent of all the culls which can be dialed. 

 Errors due to wrong ninnbers are at a minimiun and other difficulties 

 are relatively low. In so far as this trial can answer the questions, the 

 results are all in favor of the nationwide extension of customer dialing 

 as the development and installation of facilities suitable for this purpose 

 make it possible to do so. 



In \iew of the prospect of nationwide customer dialing, fundamental 

 plan studies are now being made by the Telephone Companies through- 

 out the country of the whole layout of plant including the distribution 

 of centralized automatic message accounting equipments with the future 

 general application of this method of operation. The present indication 

 is that the number of points at which toll operating centers will be re- 

 (juired will be greatly reduced. This will react in important ways on the 

 design of telephone buildings, telephone equipment installations and 

 toll circuit routes. 



AUTOMATIC TOLL SWITCHING AND ACCOUNTING EQUIPMENT 



All of these plans depend upon the successful development of striking 

 innovations in toll switching and automatic message accounting equip- 

 ments. The plans in turn react upon the features to be incorporated 

 in such equipments and upon the schedule of their development. Mr. 

 Shipley's paper, pages 860 to 882, tells about the more important fea- 

 tures of these equipments and the problems which are involved in their 

 development. 



CONCLUSIONS 



Experience with operator toll dialing shows clearly that it provides a 

 marked improvement in toll service. This improvement will increase as 

 progress is made toward the full application of the nationwide automatic 

 switching plan. 



The development of long distance dialing by customers is at an early 

 stage. The results of recent trials, however, indicate that nationwide 

 customer dialing has service advantages and will generally be received 

 with enthusiasm by telephone users. It is anticipated, therefore, that 

 customer dialing will rapidly expand both on a regional and on a nation- 

 wide basis. 



The service advantages of nationwide automatic switching are not 



