TELEPHONE BUSINESS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 23 June 1924, Page 5

TELEPHONE BUSINESS.

INTERESTING PARTICULARS. The matter of telephones was referred to by the Postmaster-General in his speech at the Stratford banquet last week. Inter alia he said: It was necessai v to nut into the telephone system a back bone of toll lines, sufficient to carry the business offering between exchanges. That this matter had been given very careful attention in Taranaki wgs evidenced by the fact that during recent months toll facilities had been provided whereby Stratford and other Taranaki towns could obtain telephone communication at any time of the day or night with all the larger towns in Auckland and Wellington districts. The people of New'Zealand, he added, were fast acquiring the telephone habit, a, custom .which the department was doing its best to cultivate. As indicating the growth in the tele niton p exchange system during the financial year ended March 31 last, it might he mentioned that 11,135 new connections Were made with the telephone system, a number not exceeded in any previous year, and that notwithstanding the introduc’ tion of the rating system, the number of connections increased from 102,032 to 106,764, a nett gain of 4.732. Comparing the figures of 1910 with those of 1923. the number of telephone connections in New Zealand showed an increase from 72.501 to 106,. 764, a percentage increase of 47.