On This Day in Telephone History October 17TH 1949 East and West Coast Toll Dialing Began. The two networks were joined for coast-to-coast dialing of long-distance calls by operator dialing. On the demonstration call, the ringing signal of the originating calling telephone in New York began 30 seconds after the toll operator in Oakland, California, received the call. Operator Toll Dialing was a telephone calling method of the Bell System in the USA and Canada to automate the switching and billing of long-distance calls in the public switched telephone network. Operator Toll Dialing was replaced with Direct Distance Dialing where the customer dialed the area code and the telephone number.

On This Day in Telephone History October 17TH 1949

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On This Day in Telephone History October 17TH 1949 East and West Coast Toll Dialing Began. The two networks were joined for coast-to-coast dialing of long-distance calls by operator dialing. On the demonstration call, the ringing signal of the originating calling telephone in New York began 30 seconds after the toll operator in Oakland, California, received the call. Operator Toll Dialing was a telephone calling method of the Bell System in the USA and Canada to automate the switching and billing of long-distance calls in the public switched telephone network. Operator Toll Dialing was replaced with Direct Distance Dialing where the customer dialed the area code and the telephone number.