Telephone Services Keep Pace With City’s Growth

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 5

Telephone Services Keep Pace With City’s Growth

(Specially written for "The Press" by TERRY McGOVERNE)

QN the third floor of an undistinguished grey-faced building in Hereford street, Christchurch, is a complex and ever-growing nerve centre which vivifies one of the city’s most vital communications systems.

It is the metropolitan telephone exchange which indirectly supercedes the first public telephone system to be opened in New Zealand. It went into service on September 24, 1881, with 30 subscribers and one operator. The very first telephone conversation officially recorded in Christchurch was between the police station and the asylum.

The operator who connected that call and his successors have long since been replaced by automation while the number of subscribers has exploded to 73,000 giving every third person in the Christchurch postal district a telephone.

Telecommunications, especially the telephone service, have since the war made a great leap forward to match the rise in living standards and the expansion of industry and commerce.

In 1945, the district had a telephone directory not much larger than a paper-back novel with a total listing of 13,513. The latest directory issued two months ago contains more than 70,000 names and is about five times larger than the immediate post-war edition.

Post-War Demand

Official estimates based on the present rate of growth indicate that by 1990 there will be 180,000 telephone connexions in the Christchurch metropolitan area. By then, the Post Office expects that private homes

will commonly have two telephone connexions independently connected to the exchange. It was demand, coupled with post-war affluence, that sent the expansion of private telephone services soaring. So heavy was the demand in 1954 that the Post Office had a list of 12,000 persons waiting for telephones. Today, the waiting list is down to a mere 400 and this is expected to be reduced to a nominal figure within two months when additional equipment comes into operation.

Twenty years ago there were four exchanges in Christchurch—in the city, at St. Albans, Cashmere and New Brighton. Now there are 20 of which 10 are working well below their full quota of possible connexions.

This means that residents living within the areas of 10

exchanges could have telephones connected to their homes on request with a delay amounting to the time it takes a team of technicians to install the telephone.

Quick Installation

It is on record that one subscriber had the telephone on within two hours of signing a contract at the Post Office.

For practically the whole of Christchurch connexions are available within one week of application but in a few areas there is a waiting list of a few months not so much because of the number of applicants but because of the shortage of equipment required to link new connexions to the exchange.

Teleprinters Used

Little pockets in the heart of the city where there is a high density of telephones are the most difficult to give new services.

But even these, the Post Office will, at times, go to lengths which are considered economically unjustifiable to

give service to someone who has waited 12 months or more for a telephone.

Most of the work involved in supplying telephone service goes on unnoticed by the public nor is the complicated procedure in starting it for any one subscriber known. By using a closed-circuit teleprinter between the four departments concerned with telephone installations, the delay in providing service in Christchurch is the shortest in any New Zealand metropolitan area. Once a prospective subscriber applies for a telephone and completes a contract his application is within minutes in the hands of the outside connexion staff and the departments which record the relevant information.

400 Men On Job

Merely by consulting a map and file the interviewing officer is able to decide at once if service is available to any applicant. As soon as a contract has been completed and the connexion fee of £5 is paid, coded details of the applicants requirements are signalled simultaneously to directory service, the faults centre, the commercial branch and the installation headquarters. Outside staff overseers say that it seldoms takes more than six days from the time

of application to installation. Thirty gangs do nothing but install telephones at the rate of as many as 200 a day.

All told, 400 men are directly engaged in supplying and maintaining the overhead and underground telephone network and the installation of private or business telephones. The Post Office sees little prospect of supply reaching saturation point. As more homes are built more telephones will be needed and the American trend of having two telephones or more in one home should be followed. The relatively low cost of having a telephone service will continue to stimulate the demand and remain the envy of other countries where not only are annual rentals higher than New Zealand but every call is metered and charged for at the rate up to 6d a call. The aim of the Post Office is to provide service to every applicant, but it is well aware that thousands of people who never had the opportunity to take the telephone for granted will ever want one. There are still those who are slightly awed by the invention and a little frightened of lifting that receiver.