RADIO TELEPHONY

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20091, 21 November 1930, Page 10

RADIO TELEPHONY

OVERSEAS SERVICE. MANY TESTS HAVE BEEN MADE. When the- overseas radio telejjhone service opens to the public of New Zealand on or about Tuesday next, people will be able to converse with their friends or business associates in Australia almost as easily and conveniently as if they were in New Zealand. A similar service will soon be available to England. This will mark the completion of a long and delicate aeries of tests which have been carried out during the past few months by the engineers of the Post and Telegraph Department in the four centres.

Very little has been said about them publicly because the Department wished to make certain that radio telephony overseas would be quite efficient before it raised the hopes of the people. It has been known fjuite vaguely that such a service would be feasible some time in the future but when, on Tuesday night, Mr Forbes spoke to members of his Cabinet in Wellington and to his family in Cheviot it became clear that radio telephony had arrived in the Dominion almost unheralded. Calling Up Sydney. Tiie service from Australia to England has been operating for some months and the latest development is the extension of this to New Zealand. From Christchurch and Dunedin in the south, and from Wellington and Auckland in the north, test calls have been put through to ascertain with what degree of clarity voices can be heard; then adjustments requiring much technical Bkill have been made. Only yesterday afternoon a reporter entered the District Telegraph Engineer's office to find Mr D. E. Parton calling up Sydney. The results of tests in the South Island, he said, had been fairly satisfactory, though there was the periodic fading of the radio across the Tasman, due to atmospheric conditions.

From Christchurch the connexion was »nade by land line and then by cable across Cook Strait to Wellington. There the Exchange was connected to the radio transmitting atation on Tinakori Hill and to the receiving station which was near Evans Bay. From here the circuit was carried on by wireless across the Tasman. What the User Does. When the service was opened next week all those who wished to call up Australia would have to do would be to ring Toll and furnish as complete dotails as possible of the place and person they wished to ring. This information would be transmitted to Wellington and the user at this end would be informed over the telephone when a connexion had been inade. The charge for a three minute call to Australia would be 60s with a charge of 20s for each additional minute. He was unable to supply particulars of the charges for a ring to England, when that service was available. He understood that the service to Australia would be daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Possibilities of Extension.

For the present, added Mr Parton, communication would only be possible from the main centres—in the South Island at any rate —but tests were to be continued to enable an extension to other places in the Dominion. Similarly, England and Australia would be the only two countries conrtected with New Zealand by this means for the time being, but thero were great possibilities for extension. The Department was confident that, once the public became educated to the advantages of the radio telephone, the service would be a success from a business point of view. It was expected that commercial men would make much use of it.