Telephone Services.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43219, 24 August 1907, Page 2

Telephone Services.

According to the latest report of the Post and Telegraph Department, the total number of telephone exchanges in the colony is 105, made up of 29 central, and 76 sub-exchanges, these serving 17,403 subscribers which represent, roughly speaking, about one telephone to every 52 inhabitants. According to the latest statistics, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have one to every 14 inhabitants, and until we are able to devise a scheme that will enable the isolated individual in his country home to secure the benefit of telephonic-com-munication,, at a cost within the means of the average resident ip the outlying districts, we shall fail to reach the standard obtained in those countries, Life in the baokblocks would be ever so much more endurable were our settlors able to communicate one with the other over telephone lines, and there can be no real reason why the Government should not approve of some system, under which country councils or road boards would be authorised to organise, and arrange for, telephones to be brought within the reach of settlers within their jurisdiction. .State ownership of local exchangesgia scarcely as satisfactory as municipal or private ownership. France and Germany, which have adopted the State telephonic services, are the two worst telephoned countries in Europe, the services being poor and the rates high, while in Switzerland and Luxemburg, the services are both cheap and good, The State of Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, again, which owns and controls its telephone servioe, with a (population of 35,000, mostly farmers and fishermen, has a thousond subscribers to its telephone service, the average receipts per subscriber being about £3 l Os, and the resultant profit £125 per annum.