Advance planning of the telephone toll plant

The advance planning activities of a large telephone company is a field of endeavor that perhaps is not very generally understood by those not intimately associated with the communication art. This may be due to many circumstances, the more probable of which is the fact that telephone service has grown to be one of the necessities of social and business life and, from casual observation, seems to differ but little in individual locations. In the small or large community, similar subscribers apparatus is in general use; wires and poles of like character are in evidence and service is apparently rendered in much the same manner. These observations are basically correct. In structural design and operating practises, however, widely different problems are encountered in the rendering of service in separate communities.