Cable Merger

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 47, 7 June 1929, Page 7

Cable Merger

Epoch-making Event T the meeting of Marconi’s Wireless Yelegraph Company, Lord Inverforth, who presided, recalled that the Government took the exploitation of Imperial beam wireless out of the hands of the company, which had invented and developed the system, and made it a Post Office monopoly. The Government license to the Marconi Company excluded its participation in Léss telegraphy to the rest of the Enetire. In the circumstances, the only revenue the company could hope to derive from the beam service was, 4 royalty of 6% per cent. on the gross traffic. It also became certain that as Marconi’s foreign services developed the cable companies would not sit quietly under wireless competition, but would embark on a rate war, which would certainly have reduced their revenue and been even more damaging to the Marconi Company. He believed that the establishment of one compre‘hensive system of Imperial communications would form a landmark in the history of world communications. ’ Resolutions authorising the merger were carried unanimously. At a meeting of the Hastérn Telegraph Company, Sir Denison Pender said that the invention of beam wireresulted in the establishment by he British Government of beam wire- less communication "in competition with our most remunerative fields of telegraphic correspondence. If we reduced the cable rates to wireless rates and recovered the traffic previously lost to the beam, the Government would reduce the rates still further." esontions for the merger were carried.