Performance of Telephone Operators relative to Traffic Level

ONE of the important problems involved in the efficient running of a telephone exchange is to decide on the number of operators required to deal with the expected volume of traffic. Calls arrive at an exchange at approximately random time intervals, so that the longer subscribers wait for their calls to be answered, the less respite will there be for the operators. To provide a service where subscribers rarely wait would require so many operators or trunks that they would be idle for a very large proportion of their time. In practice, a balance is struck between subscriber waiting and operator/equipment waiting.