Service

In the United States and Canada, universal service was a stated goal of the telephone industry during the first half of the 20th century—every household was to have its own telephone. This goal has now been essentially reached, but before it became a reality, the only access many people had to the telephone was through telephones, usually placed in a neighborhood store. A pay telephone is a telephone that may have special hardware to count and safeguard coins or, more recently, to read the information off credit cards or calling cards. Additional equipment at the exchange responds to signals from the pay phone to indicate to the operator or automatic exchange how much money has been deposited or to which account the call will be charged. Today the pay phone still exists, but it usually serves as a convenience rather than as primary access to the telephone network. The explosive growth of cell phones has greatly reduced the use of pay phones. The FCC estimates that more than 1 million pay phones have been removed from service since the mid-1990s.
Computer-controlled exchange switches make it possible to offer a variety of extra services to both the residential and the business customer. Some services to which users may subscribe at extra cost are call waiting, in which a second incoming call, instead of receiving a busy signal, hears normal ringing while the subscriber hears a beep superimposed on the conversation in progress; and three-way calling, in which a second outgoing call may be placed while one is already in progress so that three subscribers can then talk to each other. Some services available to users within exchanges with the most-modern transmission systems are: caller ID, in which the calling party’s number is displayed to the receiver (with the calling party’s permission—subscribers can elect to make their telephone number hidden from caller-ID services) on special equipment before the call is answered; and repeat dialing, in which a called number, if busy, will be automatically redialed for a certain amount of time.
For residential service, voice mail can either be purchased from the telephone company or can be obtained by purchasing an answering machine. An answering machine usually contains a regular telephone set along with the ability to detect incoming calls and to record and play back messages, with either an audiotape or a digital system. After a preset number of rings, the answering machine plays a prerecorded message inviting the caller to leave a message to be recorded.