F—l

EXTENSION OF TELEPHONE-EXCHANGE SERVICES New and Pending Installations in Automatic Areas The following schedule indicates the new exchange equipment installed during the year and that at present under installation to provide relief at the larger automatic exchanges: —

The new building for the Nelson automatic exchange is in course of erection, and the work of installing the automatic switching equipment to replace the existing inadequate manual exchange will commence as soon as the building is ready. It is also expected that during the next twelve months or so the Upper Hutt manual exchange and the temporary manual exchanges at Island Bay, Karori, and Kilbirnie ("Wellington), and Naenae (Lower Hutt) will be replaced with automatic systems and that a new automatic exchange will be installed at Hataitai (Wellington), and the equipment in the Wellington central exchange extended. Extension of Existing Manual Exchanges Additional switchboard equipment providing exchange facilities for hundreds of additional subscribers was installed at fifty-nine manually-operated exchanges. At Timaru work is now under way which will provide switchboard accommodation for 900 additional subscribers.

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Place. Capacity of Equipment Capacity of Equipment Provided During Year. Under Installation. Auckland area— Subscribers. Subscribers. *Tamaki .. 200 Christchurch area — 600 ♦Christchurch *Lyttelton 150 600 ♦Riccarton 900 ♦Sumner 500 Dunedin area— Andersons Bay 60 ♦Dunedin Central .. 1,500 ♦Ravensbourne 225 Wellington area— 1,125 *Kilbirnie .. .. Lower Hutt .. .. • • 5,000 *Lower Hutt 1,000 ♦Naenae 1,125 Other centres — 600 ♦Blenheim Gisborne 400 ♦Hamilton 450 600 ♦Hamilton East ♦Masterton 1,000 Napier .. 400 "{"New Plymouth 4,800 ♦New Plymouth 1,400 400 ♦Oamaru Whangarei i,ioo * This equipment is of a temporary nature and will later be replaced with new automatic switching equipment. •f New exchange replacing manual exchange.