Nearly One ’Phone To Every House

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30939, 21 December 1965, Page 1

Nearly One ’Phone To Every House

During the last five years the number of telephone subscribers in Christchurch had almost doubled and now stands at just under 70,000.

This means that there is one telephone for just over every fourth person and that the figure is getting close to one for every house In the

city. The official figure yesterday was 69,776, compared with 36,600 in 1960. During the same period the number of people on the waiting list for telephone connexions has dwindled sharply. In 1960, the list contained 8600 names but yesterday it was down to 1660.

The district engineer (Mr H. W. Wilkinson) said yesterday that the number, would be even further reduced after the opening of the new Harewood automatic exchange early next year. By .then the waiting Ust would probably be about 450. Reviewing progress on tele phone installations this year, Mr Wilkinson said that there had been 8500 new connexions.

The free-calling area had been greatly extended and now stretched from Spencerville in the north to Motukarara south and from Islington in the west to Sumner and Diamond Harbour in the east Future Plana In the near future a new exchange would be opened at Harewood, another wm planned for Memorial avenue and a third could be built at Yaldhurst if the ana developed to a sufficient extent to make one necessary. Mr Wilkinson raid that the demand for telephones wm at the rate of about 4200 a year. It wm most unlikely, he

said, that the time would come when there was no waiting list But the period of waiting would be considerably reduced.