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A telephone operator at work on a private switchboard

A telephone operator is either

• a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls (called reversed-charge calls in the UK), calls which are billed to a credit card, station-to-station and person-to-person calls, and certain international calls which cannot be dialed directly.
• a company that offers telephone services to subscribers. For example, users of a mobile phone will register with a mobile phone operator to receive GSM services.

With the development of computerized telephone dialing systems, many telephone calls which previously required a live operator can be placed automatically by the calling party without additional human intervention. Before the advent of automatic exchanges, an operator's assistance was required for anything other than calling telephones across a shared party line. Callers spoke to an operator at a switching office who then literally connected their wire to the proper circuit in order to complete the call. Being in complete control of the call, the operator was in a position to listen to private conversations. Direct Dial (DDD) systems were developed in the 1920s to reduce labor costs as usage increased, and to ensure privacy to the customer. As phone systems became more sophisticated, this sort of direct intervention by the telephone operator was needed less and less.

As well as those employed by the public networks, operators were also needed by companies to answer incoming calls and connect them to the correct extension. This function is still needed but answering systems with automated attendants and automated directories have reduced the workload of operators and in small companies the operator usually has other functions such as greeting visitors.

• Telephone switchboard
• Collect call
• Directory assistance

• Early telephone operators. The very first telephone operators (from 1878 onwards) were teenage boys. They had been used successfully as telegraph operators for many years but proved unsuitable for telephone service. They were replaced by women and operators have been almost exclusively female ever since.