Directory Enquiry Service In £80 Million Computer Development

EE 24 June 1987 DIRECTORY ENQUIRY SERVICE IN £80 MILLION COMPUTER Faster, more efficient response to callers" enquiries has re- sulted from the first phase of an £80 million programme to com- puterise inland directory en- quiries introduced by British Telecom. At the 186 centres where the Directory Assistance System (DAS) has been installed to give nationwide coverage, British Telecom operators can now call up numbers on to a screen at the touch of a button. This has cut by a quarter the average time taken to handle an enquiry, reducing it from 52 to 39 seconds. The improvement in efficiency has led to a significant rise in directory enquiries. Last year British Telecom dealt with 500 million calls. Before DAS started, directory enquiry calls were growing at between 3 and 4 per cent a year. The growth rate has now almost doubled, to between 6 and 7 per cent. To meet this growth British Telecom is now implementing phase two of the DAS project. This is a doubling of capacity to en...