WIRELESS MERGER

Hokitika Guardian, 30 May 1929, Page 5

WIRELESS MERGER

POSITION OF COMPANIES. .'United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Received this day at 11.25. a.m.) LONDON, May 29. At a meeting of Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Coy, Mr . Vercforth, presiding, recalled that the Government took the exploitation of Imperial beam wireless out of the hands oi the Company which had invented and developed the system, and made it a post office monopoly. The Government license to the Marconi Coy excluded its participation in wireless telegraphy to the rest of the Empire. In the circumstances the only revenue the Company could hope to derive from the beam service was a royalty of 6* per cent on the gross traffic. It also became certain that as Marconi’s foreign services developed cable companies would not sit quietly under wireless competitions, hut would embark on a rate war, which would certainly have reduced their revenue and been even more damaging to the Marconi Coy. He believed establishment of one comprehensive system of Imperial communications would form a landmark in the history of world communications. Resolutions authorising. the merger were carried unanimously. At. the. mooting of the Eastern Tolegra'ph Coy, Denison Pender said the invention of beam wireless had resulted in the establishment by the. British Government of beam wireless communication in competition- with our most remunerative fields of telegraphic correspondence. If we reduced cable rates to wireless rates and recovered the traffic previously lost to the beam, the Government would reduce the rates still further. Resolutions for the merger were carried.