Relationships Between the Demand for Local Telephone Calls and Household Characteristics

This paper shows that residence telephone calling rates (local calls per day) are related to household characteristics (e.g., number of members, age of the head). The relationships are quantified in the form of models which estimate the number of local calls made from a household telephone as a function of the household's characteristics. These models are then converted into models which estimate the average calling rate in a given neighborhood from census-type population and housing statistics.* * In this paper, the number of calls made from a telephone refers to the number of local calls that are made from all the telephones (both the primary telephone and its extensions) billed to a particular telephone number. The average calling rate in a given 931 Telephone companies need precise estimates of average local calling rates in metropolitan areas in order to design local tariffs. These models were originally developed to help obtain these estimates. Metropolitan area calling rates are often estimated by initially selecting a sample of telephone switching systems and then observing the calling rates of a sample of telephones served by those switching systems. A switching system provides a group of telephones in a particular geographic area (neighborhood) with access to the rest of the telephone network. In past studies, large variations in average calling rate among switching systems have been observed.1 This implies that a large number of switching systems needs to be sampled to get a precise estimate of the average calling rate in a metropolitan area.