WIRELESS IN BRITAIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 905, 24 February 1930, Page 9

WIRELESS IN BRITAIN

RAPIDITY OF MODERN DEVELOPMENT TELEPHONING TO SHIPS British Official Wireless RUGBY, Saturday. Wireless telephony Is being developed witb remarkable rapidity. London is fast becoming the switchboard of the world. The Australian experimental service which has been conducted by the Post Office from the Rugby and Baldock wireless telephone stations, to a spot near Sydney, has met with great success, and an official announcement regarding the service will be made in the near future. A new service was opened by the Post Office to the Vatican State, via Rome. Recently the Isle of Man was linked to the mainland, and it is expected that a similar development will take place with regard to the Channel Islands. It is possible to telephone from Britain to ships at sea, and within a short time a service will be in operation between any fixed telephone station and passengers on main line express trains. Since the single speech channel between Britain and America was opened just over a year ago the traffic has greatly increased and now four speech channels are in use. Even these are not sufficient for the demand. Stockbrokers and other business people have accepted the transatlantic telephone as a necessary aid to business, and use It for long calls dally. The present traffic is about 1,000 calls a day.

Work has been started on a new transatlantic cable, which is to be available for telephony, and it is expected to be completed soon. The British Post Office is leading Europe, if not the world, in telephony, and is most anxious to fill existing gaps and to link ud with other countries, such as Turkey, which depends to a great extent on the efficiency of her machinery and administration abroad. London is now in direct communication with IS Continental countries, the United States, Canada, Cuba and Mexico. ___