A New Electronic Telephone Accounting System for Local Telephone Calls

Telephone switching systems provide facilities to measure subscriber usage for billing purposes. As new telephone services are offered, additional equipment is often required to appropriately measure this usage. Rate plans are being considered by telephone companies to more appropriately reflect service rendered on local telephone calls and additional equipment is required. This paper describes an electronic local message accounting system to measure local call usage which can be appliquéd to Panel, No. 1 crossbar, No. 5 crossbar, and Step-by-Step switching entities. Magnetic tape records for each local call provide: directory number of the calling party, distance to the called party, duration, and time of call termination. This information allows subscriber billing based on many and varied criteria which are established by software at the revenue accounting office. The system is presently in widespread use. The first installation occurred in January 1972, and now almost 5 percent of all telephones in the United States are served by the system.