Operating With Difficulty
by Wintermute
New York Telephone recently introduced a new service to its customers. It's called operator service. Other telephone companies around the nation are doing the same thing. When customers in New York dial 0, they get connected to a New York Telephone (NYT) operator. When they dial 00, they get connected to an AT&T operator (assuming they've chosen AT&T as their long distance company).
The equipment used for the NYT operators consists of a Northern Telecom DMS-200 switch running Toll Operator Position System (TOPS) software. This change, while refreshing, has brought about many problems - not to mention my pet peeve: when an operator answers, there is no longer a beep.
The most important problems can be grouped into two major categories: routing and hardware.
Routing Problems
*) From coin phones you cannot dial 00 to get an AT&T operator. Instead you are routed to an intercept recording.
*) As an alternative to dialing 0, you're supposed to be able to dial 10XXX0# to get an operator, where XXX is the three-digit number of the long-distance company. This is assuming that the long-distance company offers operator services in the first place. But from a payphone, dialing 102880# (288 is the three-digit number for AT&T) gets you an NYT operator! Dialing 107770# or 103330# is supposed to get you a Sprint operator. But instead you get an NYT operator again.
*) New York Telephone "coin craftsmen," those guys who fix our payphones, will be in for a nice surprise. There is a coin test number which checks to see if a payphone's "negative start package" or Red Box is working. From the 212 area code you dial 0-212-959-1230 and from 718 you dial 0-718-959-1230. (Other areas may allow you to dial 0-959-1230.) The way NYT is routing traffic, a 0+ (zero plus) call within New York State (and the small part of Connecticut served by NYT) gets sent to the TOPS DMS. The 959-1230 is handled out of an AT&T TSPS. When the TOPS receives the 212-959-1230, it searches its database of exchanges and sees that 959 is not a valid exchange in 212, as well as "invalid" NPAs (710, 200, 210, 700, 999, etc.). This presents a problem when trying to call ALLIANCE Teleconferencing (0-700-456-1000). The TOPS receives 700-456-1000 and sees that 700 is not a valid New York area code. It then routes you to an announcement: "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number or ask your operator to help you."
*) NYT operators can't dial 959, 800, 900, 976, 950, 970, 540, and 550 calls. I can understand not being able to connect you to most 800 numbers, but the 800-698 exchange is a new one that's owned by New York Telephone. Yet the operator cannot dial it.
*) There is one trick which comes in handy. To get free directory assistance (DA) from a Customer-Owned Coin Operated Telephone (COCOT), you dial 0-NPA-555-1212. If the NPA is within the New York City area (212, 516, 718), the call speeds straight through to DA. (Note: The caller must also be within that area.) Most COCOTs let you dial 0+ without asking for money, so your DA call would be free. Similar variations of this trick probably work in other parts of the country.
Hardware Problems
*) As I mentioned before, the operator does not beep when she answers a call.
*) When you dial a 0+ call, you are given a choice of dialing 0 at the tone or entering your calling card number at the tone. If you call from a pulse or rotary phone and don't respond with Touch-Tone after the tone, an operator will arrive to assist you. Sometimes, right before the "enter calling card" tone (sounds like a # tone melting into a quick dial tone) you hear a quick second of distorted noise, like a fragment of speech. When this happens, if you are on a pulse phone and can't dial a 0 in Touch-Tone, the calling card tone will repeat every couple of seconds forever! This seems to be happening less now than when they put the first TOPS in Manhattan sometime last year.
*) There seems to be an overwhelming problem with intelligible crosstalk. Many times right after the operator answers you hear a loud click and then a burst of 12 multi-frequency (MF) digits, followed by "Operator, may I help you?" Both operators will then say there is a "crossed line" and hang up.
*) This problem is by far one of the worst. It's been reported that when emergency interrupts are made by the NYT TOPS operators to some older mechanical central offices, the operator will sometimes come onto the line with a reorder (fast busy) or recording. Sometimes when the operator leaves the line the recording stays there and the interrupted party cannot hang up. One reader wrote us and said that after an interrupt there was a recording saying "The area code for the number you dialed has been changed to 718" on his line for 24 hours! During the course of this ordeal, two or three other people got tied in on crosstalk and also could not hang up.
*) There aren't enough facilities to handle the bulk of calls the NYT operators seem to be receiving. Many times after dialing a 0+ call and hitting a 0 at the tone, you will get a reorder. Sometimes you get a recording telling you to wait because all operators are busy and then you get a reorder. Every once in a while you get a reorder when a New York Telephone operator tries to pass you to an AT&T operator.
*) Finally, these new operators seem to have less experience dealing with people than AT&T operators. They can be quite rude and often don't know what they can and can't dial. It's not hard to get them to waste everyone's time by trying over and over to dial an 800 number.
The introduction of these NYT operators has proven to be fun, educational, and annoying as hell. If you have any observations, comments, or questions on this latest change in the system, contact me at 2600 and I'll do my best to investigate.