ANSWERING THE TELEPHONE
SIR,—In contrasting American DDD (Direct Distance Dialling) with British STD (Subscriber Trunk Dial- ling) Leslie Adrian fails to mention some points in favour of this country's system. Under STD, the three- minute minimum charge has been abolished and calls can be made between the most distant exchanges for a few pence. This means a considerable saving in call charges to subscribers. And even three-minute calls are cheaper. For instance, a three-minute call from Bristol to Edinburgh costs 2s. 6d. compared with the normal rate of 3s. 6d. In America there is no difference in the charge on dialled calls ao* those obtained through operators. Perhaps this ex- plains why little more than half of the trunk calls which can be dialled on America's six million tele- phones linked to DDD—only 10 per cent. of the phones in the United States—are being dialled by subscribers. In Bristol, since STD's introduction in December, very nearly all such calls are being dialled.
In praising some of the 'refinements' in Vienna, Leslie Adrian fails to mention all of the British telephone information services. At present a caller in most of our big cities can get the accurate time, weather forecasts in the part of the country in which he is interested, during winter months road con- ditions throughout the country, in the summer the latest Test Match scores and, in London, informa- ion about 'What Is On Today'—for the benefit of foreign visitors, in French and German as well as in English. The Post Office is at present considering other ideas, among them being an answering service. In fact, a service of this nature was experimented with in some provincial cities over twenty years ago.
The British Post Office has been concentrating on using the limited capital which it is allowed to expend on such essentials as the reduction of the waiting list and the building of new automatic ex- changes. That this has had some success is shown by the fact that the number of people waiting for service at the end of last year was 146,339 compared with well over 300,000 at the end of 1954. By the way, there are less than half the number of telephones in Western Germany than in this country.—Yours Public Relations Officer Headquarters Building, General Post Office, St. Martin's-le-Grand, ECJ
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