TELEPHONE CHARGES.

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1920, Page 2

TELEPHONE CHARGES.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —With reference to uie proposed increase in telephone charges, surely tiie Postmaster-Ceneral cannot be aware of the indignation which is being felt by country subscribers against the unjust.fied addition to the burden the back-blocks settler already has to carry. It may be that, in order to carry on in these expensive times the extra ijl flat rate is justified, but who can justify the increase of 5s per quar-ter-mile on • distance telephones. This is the part that hits the back-blocks man particularly hard. Why should we pay more than the city man for the ordinary necessities of life? For if telephones are a necessity to any private house, it surely is in the country, where neighbours are distant and doctors still more so. Further, the extra charge for toll communications hardly encourages the settler to install the telephone when any non-subscriber can call up business firms in town for the same charge as a subscriber if the exchange is over twenty miles. There should be no mileage limit of this kind. It is a direct discouragement to country settlers, the further away from the -city the harder it hits. Cheaper and greater telephone facilikes to settlers was one <of the planks of the Reform Party’s platform, but perhaps we misunderstood them. However, if these charges are persisted in almost every settler will anply for disconnection, and so there will be the end of any telephone facilities at all for we back-block settler*. SETTLER,