911 service center troubles [Telecom]

And I wonder how many of those centers are in municipalities that have been collecting "911 fees" for decades and spending the proceeds as general revenue?

***** Moderator's Note *****

Well, if cellular users can dial 911, then the "911 fees" would be justified, n'est-ce-pas?

I suspect the 911 fees are used to pay for the equipment (whatever it may be), employees, and other expenses of the 911 call center.

I believe 911 operators are a specialty in centralized call centers these days; calls used to be handled by cops on special duty or in smaller towns whoever happens to answer the phone.

My guess is that the 911 surcharge on our phone bills replaces general tax dollars once used to pay for such services.

But the real question is how were such expenses paid in the past, between Bell and the police? That is, in the past one dialed 0- operator and asked for help and the Bell operator connected the person to the cops. I believe the calls were free. If need be, the operators would stay on the line to assist, indeed, the Bell System made a big deal about heroic assistance provided by an operator to someone in distress. I do not think Bell got any extra compensation for that service (unlike today, where if you merely stare at the 0 button you get charged service fee.)

Presumably Bell did collect rental on the police dept telephones. Bell had dispatcher switchboards as part of its product line for larger police departments. Basic 911 goes way back when it was merrly a dial shortcut in cities. Did Bell get anything for that; or were they just happy to remove some call volume from 0-operators?

Note that in the 1970s Bell needed to add more operators, despite automation, to handle ever more requests for operator services, and was naturally concerned about the increased labor costs. That's when they introduced discounts for dialed direct station toll calls and surcharges for operator handled toll calls. Directory assistance charges came next.

_PART_ of the money also goes to the telco, to pay for the required extra capabilities on the C.O. side. Both one-time costs for acquisition, and recurring monthly for maintaining it.

The '911 fee' money is _strictly_ for the *telecom* side of the 911 center operation -- i.e., C.O. side interfaces, dedicated trunks, and the center CPE. Everything _else_ -- payroll, space, power, etc. -- comes out of the regular operating budget of the serving agency. If it's a 'consolidated' 911 center, then the costs are distributed, pro rata, among the multiple agencies it serves.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It *really* depends on the locale. From my experience, in a lot of more built-up areas, 911 tends to be handled as a function of the _city_, usually the police dept -- with 'hotline' communications and direct call-transfer capability to the dispatchers for other emergency services. In more rural areas, it may be a consolidated function, at the _county_ level. Again, with hotlines and call-transfer to city/town/village/whatever units within the boundaries, _and_ similar capabilities to adjacent (at least) counties.

Entirely correct. It was a 'public service' function of the ILEC, performed on a 'pro bono' basis.

All gov't "emergency services agencies" had a published "emergencies" number. People were expected to call that number if they could. Calling perator in an emergency was intended as a "back-up" procedure -- it was put in place expressly to cope with two kinds of problems.

1) The person making the call _does_not_know_ the correct *local* emergency-service number (there was -no- consistency between communities), and 2) The person making the call is in such 'dire straits' that they might not be able to dial the full 7-digit number.

The *big* increase in operator requirements occurred Post-WWII/post-Korea, coinciding with the -vast- increase in installations of residential phone lines.

DDD ("Direct Distance Dialing") had discounted pricing -- essentially from 'day one' -- for the express purpose of getting people to migrate their calling to the 'new' technology. After _most_ calls were being placed without operator assistance, a change to the 'default' rates was made, quoting the DDD rate as base, with a surcharge for operator assistance, vs. quoting the operator- assisted rate, with a discount for DDD. The two ways of calculating rates gave effectively identical results, the real difference being the amount of 'think time' it took to get the 'not specifically quoted' rate figure.

I dunno (see other post). Back in the 1960s my family and employer both made many toll calls and we kept careful track of toll rates and discount options.

I recall the only two classes were station-to-station and person-to- person; it did not matter how you made the call. (Evenings and Sundays were discounted). Some members of my family purposely used a pay phone as a way to force a short call (and thus save money)--when time was up the money dropped and time was up. Anyway, the charges were the same from a pay phone or the home phone.

When DDD first came out some members of my family didn't trust it and refused to use it. No extra cost.

My employer always got time & charges. No extra cost.

A NYT article, May 29, 1969, announces a "new rate _structure_ designed to encourage use of automatic switching equipment". This to me confirms it was a new structure and I remember that. Also, see NYT of Jan 3, 1970.

Not everyone liked the long distance rate reductions. AT&T said microwave high capacity allowed the reduction. However, local rates were going up, and some claimed local service was cross subsidizing long distance service.

Thus, the genesis of Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) (I think I got that right.) That is where the "O" calls would be distributed to the next available operator in any number of metro service centers. The maximum distance at inception was 50 miles via T carrier.

Since the beginning the Bell System sought to improve operator productivity through automation assist. For example, in manual boards, the operators had automatic ringing.

Actually, connecting most calls by the 1960s was easy, the operator would merely dial the area code and number. It was recording the start/stop/ number from/number to that took up time, then processing those hand written records. A toll operator spend most of her time writing up toll tickets, not connecting calls.

TSP/TSPS was to improve operator productivity by having the customer dial the number and automate AMA recording. The operator no longer "connected" the call through her switchboard, rather, she merely directed the equipment to do so. The operator used a push button console. The console itself had its genesis back in the 1950s with experiments, and came out in the 1960s. The first mode was "Traffic Service Position" followed by "Traffic Service Position System", which was more sophisticated.

On TSP/TSPS, the subscriber dialed 0+ac+number and the operator had less to do. On station coin calls, the operator got a display of the cash due and merely asked for the money and counted the coin drops. By pressing a button the operator could see the call cost, length, numbers, etc. This seems simple today, but in the 1960s it was sophisticated.

As an aside, every TSPS operator still had a set of toll tickets and could manually set up and route a call and record the data if needed, which they occassionally had to do.

One website has pictures of computer terminals squeezed onto cord switchboards which apparently were an aid to cord service.

That is what it did; it was the death of the cord boards and the local operators who know the area. In GTE areas they went through one of the

3 Toll offices then to the operator. I spent the better part of a year converting director system throughout Orange County and The South Bay. I still can take apart the system make the changes and put it back together in less then 10 minutes and that was way back in 1973/74.

In California, 911 on a cell phone always went to the CHP until about

2005 when the rules were changed to require cellular companies to be able to locate the phone. Now the system tries to do something smart with the calls, usually sending them to the nearest city even if you're on the Interstate.

Most of the time, when I've used it, I've wanted the CHP; I wish that agency would re-establish its own special number (since I doubt you can still ask for "Zenith 12000" and get through).

I also recall that when this service was new, CHP got flooded with accidental 911 calls from people who forgot to lock the phone's keypad before stuffing it in a pocket or crowded purse. If this still happens, it would not be at all unreasonable for local governments to want to recoup the cost by applying a "911 tax" to cell phone owners.