BRITAIN’S TELEPHONES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 473, 1 October 1928, Page 13

BRITAIN’S TELEPHONES

SYSTEM TO BE BROUGHT UP TO DATE BIG PROGRAMME STARTED Visitors to England have on innumerable occasions expressed amazement, and with justification, at the backwardness and inefficiency of the British telephone system as compared with their own. They have also been sreatly surprised that the British Public at large does not take more advantage of the telephone opportunities offered.

The British post office, which controls the telephone system, has a vast project in hand which, if carried out successfully, will alter this state of *®»irs. It proposes to spend 1.5,000,000 dollars during the next three years in improving the telephone •ervice and encouraging the public to make more use of it. At many of the big hotels in Great “Jitain there are still no telephones in toe bedrooms, and a guest, at any hour, may have to go down several nights of stairs to the hotel office to answer a call. This is all the more inconvenient if the guest happens to . in h> a bed or his bath at the time.

In the crowded suburbs of London telephones are installed in compara''eely few houses, and in the outlying districts public call-boxes are few ana far between. Even then most of , m are not available at all hours, i •"*. reason that the majority are Placed in railroad stations and stores watch are closed at night. Only recently in London itself have be telephone authorities awakened to the need for all-night call-boxes, Bu a few of them, at considerable “stances apart, can now be seen •tout the city. The programme of the British post oce provides for new apparatus, improved trunk services, many new ex■tauges, conversions to automatic •orklng and large extensions in rural “Stricts. When this prgoramme has **n carried out, many out-of-the-way jwnera of Scotland and Wales will be “ked up with the telephone system, wiring the last 12 months or so more a hundred new exchanges have built, and the rural development campaign is being pushed on with all Gamble speed.