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Show VICKERS tells of 1 NEW TELEPHONE FEATURES Gerald E. Vickers, Beaver County manager for Mountain States, reported today that marketing trials now under way in Iowa and Massachusetts may eventually provide telephone tele-phone services for residents m our area which will allow their present telephones to act as personal secretaries. Called "Custom Calling Services," Ser-vices," these new developments are made possible by a central office "memory" unit designed by Bell Telephone Laboratories. Labora-tories. , Mr Vickers explained that the new services will provide four custom functions not presently possible with telephones tele-phones in any other area. "They will personalize telephone tele-phone service in a way never before possible," he said. One of these Custom Calling Services, called "speed calling," call-ing," will enable a customer to call up to eight frequently-called frequently-called numbers by dialing only one digit instead of the usual seven. It is expected to be a time-saver for everyone, but of special help to the handicapped handicap-ped or elderly. "Threeway calling" will allow al-low a customer" to add a third party from the local area to any conversation. The original call may 'be long distance or local, incoming our outgoing. Thus, three people at different differ-ent locations can share in a common conversation. This service ser-vice is now available by installing in-stalling specially designed "add on" equipment. "Of special interest to many," Mr. Vickers explained, will be the Call Transfer service.' Even when the customer cus-tomer is away from home or out of the office, lie can receive re-ceive calls. By dialing a code into his own phone, he can 'set' the phone to automatically automatical-ly transfer incoming calls to any of eight pre-selected numbers, num-bers, where he can be reached." A short tone signal to a customer cus-tomer using his phone will alert him that someone else is trying to call him. Another service, "Call Waiting," will then let him press the "hang up" button to answer the new call while the first party waits out of the second conversation, conversa-tion, but not disconnected. At the end of this call he can press the button again to resume re-sume the original conversation. This service will help put an end to missed calls and frustrating frus-trating busy signals. "These new services -will take years to develop completely com-pletely and incorporate into our present telephone systems," Mr. Vickers said, "but their assistance as-sistance to the customer will make them worth the wait." |