TELEPHONE TROUBLES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1742, 6 May 1913, Page 6

TELEPHONE TROUBLES.

GETTING THE CABLES UNDERGROUND. ' SOME RECENT DIFFICULTIES. Following upon the heavy downpours of rain last week a large number of telephones got out of order. Some subscribers have not been üble to get into communication with tho exchange sinco Thursday evening last, and repair work is still busily in progress. A reporter who made inquiries on tho subject at tho Telegraph Department yesterday, was informed that the trouble was that the lead cables in which most of tho telephone wires arc now enclosed are perishing wholesale. These cables, it seems, do not last as long in Wellington as elsewhere, when they are exposed to tho weather, and efforts aro being made to transfer them as rapitlly as possible from .the poles to underground conduits. Tho explanation of tho .recent' "trouble with telephones is that the cables hanging in tho poles easily become punctured. It is essential to tho pornioncnc<£of the insulation of the wires within the cables that the latter should be hermetically scaled. In wet and stormy weather a very small puncturo in tho lead sheathing lets in enough water to destroy the insulation, and give rise to all sorts of irregularities in the telephone sen-ice. For instance, subscribers attempting to ring the exchange, viii£ up several other subscribers instead, and conversations passing over several different wires in the cable can bo heard at a single telephone.

The Department has appliances for drying ont the cables, work is now going on in different parts of tho city. If the weather remains lino tho trouble should disappear in a day oi- two, but it will recur during rainy periods, until tho whole of tho cables have been housed underground. . This work is complicated by tho fact that it is intended beforo long to instal automatic telephones in Wellington. In connection with the introduction of theso instruments a system of centralisation will be adopted. Telephone wires in different districts of the city will be brought to a common centre, and from this point a trunk wire will be carried to tho central exchange. One of these central points will probably bo at Courtonay Place and another at Newtown. Tho adoption of this system will reducc the cost of telephone maintenance, and enable the Department to extend the area over which tho minimum charge is levied, intsead of as at present' charging a much heavier fee for telephones at Newtown and other outlying portions of tho city. This prospective benefit makes it inadvisable to stow all the existing telephone cables underground, as some of them will not bo required when the automatic system is installed. As far as possible, however, the work of housing the cables underground is being pushed on at speed, and two gangs have been constantly engaged upon it for some time past. Many of the cables in tho central part of the city have been placed underground, and tlio same applies to Oriental Bay. The work is now in progress at Kaiwarra. Tho telepliono cable to Lower Hutt has given a lot of trouble in tho past, and it is proposed to put ton miles of it (it is duplicated in some places) underground.

When the automatic telephones hare been fully installed all the cables will be underground conduits, and it is hoped that this end will bo, achieved in eighteen months or a coiiplo of years from Hie present time. The.ro will then bo an end of such telephone troubles as were causd by the recent storm.