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AT&T discovers Google exists; retires 411.

November 9, 2022 By Andrew

One of our readers recently forwarded me this announcement from AT&T – apparently Operator Services and Directory Assistance will no longer be available on their U-verse voice lines – starting January 1, 2023.

Instead, they advice that “Addresses and numbers can still be located using online services, such as internet search engines, including Google®, Bing®, and Yahoo!®”.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever called either operator services or 411 for personal reasons – but I’ve made plenty of test calls to these services; and I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of my life troubleshooting problems with operator services on MF trunks.

So I’m not sure how I feel about the death of these services. On the one hand, in today’s world, I can’t imagine many people require operator assistance to place a phone call. On the other hand, being able to dial a human operator harkened back to the early days of telecoms, when every call was operator assisted. It feels like we’ve lost something historic and special.

What about you?

  • Do you still offer operator services or a 411 directory assistance?
  • How do you feel about the demise of these services?

About Andrew

Award Consulting is focused on helping ILECs and CLECs who use Metaswitch products to thrive as they improve their networks through migrations, strategic projects and improved service offerings.

Our goal is to create highly specific, highly valuable content targeted specifically at US regional service providers, and especially those who are running Metaswitch equipment. Join our email list to be notified of new content.

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Our goal is to create highly specific, highly valuable content targeted specifically at US regional service providers, and especially those who are running Metaswitch equipment. Join our email list to be notified of new content.



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