NEW TELEPHONE SERVICE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29339, 19 October 1960, Page 10

NEW TELEPHONE SERVICE

Automatic System For Dunedin Bay **The Press” Special Service DUNEDIN, October 17. When the Post and Telegraph Department’s new submarine cable is laid between Maia Point and Macandrew Bay, all telephone subscribers in the bay will be connected to the Ravensbourne exchange on a fully automatic basis.

The new service will be cut over in April to coincide with a new issue of the telephone directory. It will provide both individual and party line service, all fully automatic. Explaining the new service, Mr L. D. Bewley, divisional engineer, said the present rural type exchange, which provides for heavily loaded party lines, would be dismantled.

At present calls to and from Dunedin went through the Dunedin toll switchboard, he said, but when the newly laid cable was operating this would be eliminated. In addition, 55 subscribers in the Callingwood and Macandrew Bay areas who were now connected to the Andersons Bay .exchange by an open aerial pole line would be transferred to the Ravensbourne exchange. While the cable is being laid across the harbour, another length of the same type of cable would be laid from Maia Point across Victoria channel to the half tide wall, he said. This length of cable would be kept as an emergency which could possibly be used for future expansion.