These days, when the cost of nearly everything is higher than ever before, the price of telephone service has remained relatively low. On the average, since the Korean war, the cost of telephone service has gone up much less than the cost of other things you buy.
In the average exchange, telephone customers are able to reach over five times as many telephones at local rates as in 1920.
| 1920 | 30,000 | |
| 1954 | 156,000 | |
| Chart based on study of 170 U. S. cities over 50,000 population. | ||
Over the years there has been a remarkable reduction in long distance rates. Between 25 of the principal cities in the country, the average day rate for station calls has dropped from $6 in 1920 to about $1.55 today. The day rate for a New York-San Francisco station call has been reduced from $16.50 to $2.50. Overseas rates have been cut drastically since the service opened in 1927. A New York-London call that cost $75 in 1927 now costs only $12 in the daytime, or $9 nights and Sundays.
The goal—constantly improving service
The Bell System strives constantly to improve service. New devices, new systems, promise more and better telephone service at the lowest possible cost.
Dial service is being extended, of course, to more and more communities. Also, new equipment now enables operators to dial many long distance calls straight through to distant telephones without the assistance of other telephone operators along the route. Operator long distance dialing networks now crisscross the country, reaching out to about 3,600 cities and localities. Other localities are constantly being joined to these networks.
In more than 40 towns special installations enable customers to dial long distance calls directly to more than 11,000,000 telephones from coast to coast. An “electric brain” receives a number as it is dialed and completes the call. An automatic accounting system gathers the information for billing. Bell telephone engineers plan the extension of this Direct Distance Dialing to serve the whole nation in a decade or so.
Bell System mobile telephone service is now a reality in most major cities and on many highways. “Traveling telephones” are numerous on ships that ply coastal and inland waterways, and a growing number of passenger trains now offer regular telephone service. In addition, private line mobile telephone systems, leased and serviced by the various Bell telephone companies, are being used increasingly by police departments, utilities and industrial concerns.