NEW ATLANTIC CABLE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27213, 3 December 1953, Page 11

NEW ATLANTIC CABLE

35 SIMULTANEOUS CONVERSATIONS LONDON, December 1. A £12,500,000 agreement-'which will revolutionise Atlantic telephone talking, and speed up communications between Britain, New Zealand, and Australia, was signed in London today.

Under the agreement, telephone cables, the biggest ever made, will be laid across the Atlantic, and will enable 35 simultaneous conversations to be made between Britain, the United States, and Canada. It will also be possible for calls to be routed from America to the Continent through Britain. The scheme will take three ears to complete. It will be the first telephone cable system across the Atlantic. The Postmaster-General (Earl de la Warr) gave details of the new tele-phone-telegraph Atlantic cable scheme in the House of Lords today. The cables will be laid two miles down in places. Earl de la Warr and representatives of the United States and Canada signed the agreement. Work will start at Greenwich on the building of the cables. The first will be laid in 1955, and the second in 1956. Work will be done in the summer, when conditions in the Atlantic are most favourable. The upkeep of the new system will cost between £BOO,OOO and £900.000 a year. This will be divided between the United States and the Commonwealth countries affected, as will the initial outlay of £12,500,000. Earl de la Warr, explaining the new agreement, said: “Further technical development may well increase the number of circuits. “The new cable will help us to give much better telephone and telegraph services to New Zealand and Australia through Vancouver. “In the last year or two there have been difficulties with telephone conversations to Australia and New Zealand because of sunspots. “Things will be improved by the new method, as we shall be able to go straight across North America to Vancouver, and from there on to Australia by a north-to-south radio link, which should be much more satisfactory than an east-to-west or west-to-east link.”