Trunk call - station to station

Ok you guys please explain this to me and put Thickie in his place.

Here in the UK we always had payphones, you put your coins in and when the call was answered your call time started counting down. If you called after 6pm rates were cheaper (I seem to remember that in the eighties it was even cheaper after 1pm but that isn't important). That was it, a phone call cost was universal. I was born in the late seventies and never spoke to an operator in my life.

I've interpreted as thus:
So here is this scene where Mandrake who knows something about the US phone system, puts in a coin (has to pay to speak to the operator?) and asks for a reverse charge call (known in the U.S. as a Collect call I believe) presumably because he knows his coins can't stretch to the amount required.

When Washington won't accept the collect call he asks for this strange entity known as an 'ordinary trunk call' or 'station to station' , bringing the cost down to something he can afford.

I grew up knowing you either could afford a phone call or you couldn't. For years this scene always made me wonder if there was a bevvy of different U.S. line systems meaning that if you couldn't afford a standard-class kind of call, then you could still chat in exactly the same way to another telephone-bearing individual if the operator patched you through using a cheaper working-class connection.

Ok guys, what obvious thing don't I get?

mj