Rate and Route (was Enterprise and Zenith)

PAT: please do NOT display my email address!

Patrick Townson replied to Al Gillis:

If the telco operators are properly trained, they will either use > their (at hand) 'flip chart' to look up dialing instructions or > perhaps they will consult with Rate and Route (which is operated > for all telcos by AT&T out of Morris, IL [operator would dial > +815+161] to get details). > While Zenith and Enterprise are no longer sold to customers, > they are grandfathered to existing customers who have had the > services for (obviously) many, many years.

Operators probably don't use flip charts anymore, nor would there be any further need for specific rate and route operators.

Real telco operators in the US, both Bell and AT&T, are using either Nortel DMS-based TOPS or Lucent 5ESS-based OSPS computerized systems, not cord boards nor even TSPS anymore. All routing and rating information would be available to them straight from a database accessed from their terminals, thus no further need for flip cards, multi-leaf bulletins, nor even a dedicated rate and route operator anymore.

And the code to reach rate and route when it did exist was NOT 161 but rather 141. When Rate and Route was a regular function, there used to be numerous rate and route operators, in virtually every major "toll center" city in the US and Canada. The "local" rate and route operator was reached by a regular "dial 0" operator with 141, unless the "local" rate and route operator was in an adjacent toll office or even area code, where the area code and toll center code would be keyed, if necessary, followed by the 141 code.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for correcting me.Do you happen to know or remember what the various 'operator codes' were for various functions? Such as inward, I think was '121', if your operator had to reach a 'ring-down' point I think it was '181', and as you stated above, rate and route was 141. Do you recall all those codes? PAT]
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Mike Z
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