Pat Fleet
Encyclopedia
Pat Fleet is a working American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 voice actress known as the registered voice
Sound trademark
A sound trademark is a non-conventional trademark where sound is used to perform the trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services....

 of AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

.

Widely recognized for the tens of thousands of recordings she has made for US telephone companies such as AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

, Verizon, Qwest
Qwest
Qwest Communications International, Inc. was a large United States telecommunications carrier. Qwest provided local service in 14 western U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.On April...

, the former Bell System
Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

 companies, and others since 1981, she is still most recognized as the person who says "AT&T" in the company's sound trademark
Sound trademark
A sound trademark is a non-conventional trademark where sound is used to perform the trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services....

 played prior to any operator assisted or credit card paid call, and on answer when calling AT&T customer service numbers. She is also the voice for most "star"
Vertical service code
A vertical service code or VSC is a special code dialed prior to a telephone number that engages some type of special telephone service...

 services (e.g. Call Return, Call Blocking, etc.) for AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 local telephone companies, and the voice heard when making AT&T handled calls through 1 800 CALL ATT (225-5288) and through international AT&T access numbers such as USADirect.

History

In 1981, working alongside Jane Barbe
Jane Barbe
Jane Barbe was an American voice actress known as the "Time Lady" for the recordings she made for the Bell System and other phone companies. The ubiquity of her recordings eventually made her a pop-culture figure whose death drew national attention....

, she began recording messages for the Audichron Company
Audichron Company
Audichron Company was a company founded in the 1930s by John Franklin in Doraville, Georgia, to produce the Audichron, a talking clock. By the 1970s, there were thousands of Audichron time-of-day announcers in use all over the world. Audichron had also developed a machine to announce the temperature...

 (now known as ETC) announcing
Speaking clock
A speaking clock service is a recorded or simulated human voice service, usually accessed by telephone, that gives the correct time. The first telephone speaking clock service was introduced in France, in association with the Paris Observatory on 14 February 1933.The format of the service is...

 time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

, temperature
Temperature
Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...

 and weather
Weather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...

, and was the voice of the Bell System
Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

's Automated Coin Toll System, quoting rates and collecting charges for coin paid calls.

In addition she continues to be the voice for a significant number of telephone company intercept recordings
Intercept message
An intercept message is a telephone recording informing the caller that the call cannot be completed, for any of a number of reasons ranging from local congestion, to disconnection of the dialled phone, or network trouble along the route....

 - messages giving reasons for call failure that start with a special information tone
Special information tone
In telephony, a special information tone is an international standard three beep signal indicating a call did not go through and usually precedes a recorded announcement explaining the problem...

 and usually begin with the phrase "We're sorry...".

Through the years, her voice became well known through the phone companies
Telephone company
A telephone company is a service provider of telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many were at one time nationalized or state-regulated monopolies...

' use of her recordings, and through several AT&T internal customer studies it was determined that customers preferred her voice over any other. As a result she was selected to become the company's signature sound for the AT&T trademark in 1989.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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