Starting this month, AT&T customers with digital landlines will no longer be able to dial 411 or 0. A spokesperson said, “Nearly all of these customers have internet access to look up this information [themselves].”
Do you remember the last time you dialed 411 or 0 to reach an operator or to get directory assistance? If so, how old are you? (Sorry, but it IS a valid question, because . . .)
Starting sometime later this month, AT&T customers with digital landlines will no longer be able to dial 411 or 0. That isn’t really surprising. Two years ago, AT&T ended operator services for cell phones.
Verizon, T-Mobile, and other major carriers still offer it . . . but for a fee.
Operator services like 411 have been around for 100 years, so why are they ending now? An AT&T spokesperson said, “Nearly all of these customers have internet access to look up this information.” In other words, you don’t need an operator because you can just GOOGLE IT yourself.
In 2021, there were fewer than 4,000 telephone operators, down from a peak of 420,000 in the 1970s. But there ARE still people who call the operator. In 2019, the FCC estimated that 71 million calls annually were placed to 411.
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