Автоматическая междугородняя связь: история и развитие

Telecommunications technology and telephone numbering system
a North American equivalent

Subscriber trunk dialling (STD), also known as subscriber toll dialing, is a telephone numbering plan feature and telecommunications technology in the United Kingdom and various Commonwealth countries for the dialling of trunk calls by telephone subscribers without the assistance of switchboard operators. Switching systems to enable automatic dialling of long distance calls by subscribers were introduced in the United Kingdom on 5 December 1958. The system used area codes that were based on the letters in a town's name. A ceremonial first call was made by Queen Elizabeth II from Bristol to Edinburgh. A similar service, built on crossbar equipment, using regionally structured numbering, rather than alphanumeric codes, was experimentally introduced by P&T in Ireland in 1957, with the first services being in Athlone. A full service was rolled out in 1958, initially to exchanges in Cork and then Dublin and its hinterland, and gradually to all areas with automatic exchanges. The term 'STD call' was once commonly used in the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, and parts of Southeast Asia, but it may be considered archaic today, or possibly even no longer be understood. Other less technical terms like 'national calling,' 'long distance calling' and so on are now more commonly used. The distinction between local and long distance / STD calls is also no longer relevant to many users, as calls are charged at flat or bundled rates. It is also necessary to dial area codes on some calls, especially from mobile phones, so they are considered part of the number. Terms such as 'area code', 'prefix' or 'national dialling code' tend to be used in place of 'STD code' in the UK and in Ireland.

In the first half of the 20th century, telecommunication services developed progressively from completely manual setup of calls by operators called by subscribers, to automatic systems that could connect subscribers of the same local exchange through the use of telephone dials installed in each telephone. In the 1940s, the Bell System in the United States and Canada developed methods and technologies, called direct distance dialing and first implemented in 1951, that enabled telephone subscriber to dial long distance telephone calls themselves without calling an operator. In the United Kingdom, a similar technology called subscriber trunk dialling (STD) was ready by 1958, when Queen Elizabeth II, who was in Bristol, publicised STD by dialling Edinburgh, the farthest distance a call could be directly dialled in the UK, on 5 December 1958. The STD system was completed in 1979. The technology was extended when, from 8 March 1963, subscribers in London were able to directly dial Paris using international direct dialling. The term subscriber trunk dialling is used in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, India and South East Asia. In the UK, the term is obsolescent, better known as the UK area codes. The introduction in the UK of subscriber dialling of long distance calls removed the distinction that had existed between trunk and toll calls. This term however, is still widely prevalent in India to describe any national call made outside one's local unit. A "subscriber" is someone who subscribes to, i. e. rents, a telephone line, and a "trunk call" is one made over a trunk line, i. e. a telephone line connecting two exchanges a long distance apart. Since all calls may be dialled direct today, the term has fallen into disuse.

Because of the high volume of calls between the Republic of Ireland and the UK, international direct dialling was implemented before the formal introduction of International Subscriber Dialling. Calls were processed through the domestic STD networks and passed between the two networks as trunk traffic, without the need for international gateway exchanges.