The Press SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1971. 4c telephone calls

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32542, 27 February 1971, Page 16

The Press SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1971. 4c telephone calls

The days of the Id telephone call from a public telephone were nostalgically recalled by Mr G. G. Walker this week, when protesting against the recent increase to 4c in this charge. As Mr Walker pointed out, this is equivalent to 5d in pre-decimal currency. (He was wrong, though, in alleging that the charge was increased on the conversion to decimal currency, the pre-decimal charge of 3d was reduced 20 per cent to 2c.) Although the days of the Id telephone call are still remembered by the middle-aged, more than half the population have never made a Id telephone call; the charge was raised to 2d in 1950. In the intervening 21 years other prices in New Zealand have risen nearly 2i times, and wages more than 2J times; in real terms the price of a telephone call has doubled. But the charge for a call from a public telephone—like the charge for most other telephone services in New Zealand—remains one of the lowest in the world. In London the charge is now two new pence (equal to 4.3 c in New Zealand); in Sydney it is 7c, and in New York 10c; and. in London the call is limited to three minutes. Telephone rentals in New Zealand are cheaper than in the United Kingdom, Australia, or the United States unless the use of the telephone is restricted to a few calls a week.

This may not be much consolation to the regular user of public telephone booths in New Zealand, whoever he may be. Almost 90 per cent of households now have a telephone installed—more than twice as many as 21 years ago. Yet there are more than 4600 public telephones today, compared with 1800 in 1950. The inference to be drawn from these figures must be that most of the users of telephone booths are persons who have a telephone at home; they may be visiting businessmen making appointments, travellers making a call from a railway station or an airport, and so on. Probably very few of them are persons who cannot afford a telephone at home and must therefore struggle out of doors to the nearest telephone booth in any emergency. Even these “hardship cases” must have benefited from the proliferation of public telephone booths in the last two decades: the telephone booth must be nearer, and there must be fewer users queuing for it, than in the days of the Id call. Nor should the effects of these changes on the finances of the Post Office be forgotten. Because there are so many more telephones in private homes and business houses than in 1950 there are presumably fewer customers for the public telephone booths—yet there are more telephone booths. The number of calls made from each telephone booth must now be only a fraction of the 1950 average. And each telephone booth still has to be maintained, its equipment serviced and, regrettably, repaired after vandalism. The surprise is surely not that the charge for a call has doubled, in real terms, in the last 21 years, but that it has not increased even more.