TELE-COMMUNICATIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 December 1945, Page 8

TELE-COMMUNICATIONS

) CONFERENCE AGREEMENT i BERMUDA, December 3. i Apart from a final plenary session, scheduled for to-morrow, the work of the Tele-communications Conference finished with an agreement on many important matters which has given satisfaction to both sides. Results, for both New Zealand and Australia, have a twofold importance—namely, their effect on the tele-com-munications system as a world-wide whole, and the particular application which the conference’s decisions have for the share of those countries in the system. The Americans in their recognition of the British Commonwealth principle of a system balanced as between cable and radio, throttled what had theatened to prove a ruinous competition between these two means of communications. This point is especially important for New Zealand and Australia, for whom cables must .■remain long stable lifelines until I radio can give an uninterrupted secret service for 24 hours of the day, and 365 days of the year. British Commonwealth delegates put it on record, and the Americans could not refute it, that such a radio service still was many years from realisation. The conference showed a wideawake appreciation of technical developments. The most important decision in this field concerned the remarkable tele-typewriter method, which has impressed the delegates as sounding the deathknell for Morse sending, as it makes telegraphing by cable and radio as simple as typewriting. The conference made a move to standardise tele-typewriter equipment internationally. This is regarded as certain to achieve the desired objective.