CHEAPER CABLE RATE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 8 July 1925, Page 7

CHEAPER CABLE RATE.

FOR PRESS PURPOSES. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION-COPY RICH! LONDON, July 0. At a meeting of the Empire Press Union before the departure of the delegates to the conference in Australia, statements were received regarding press cables. Mr J. C. Denison-Pender, a director of the Eastern Telegraph Company, said the post-war expenditure on new cables and renewals exceeded £10,,000,000. It had been decided to lay an improved cable from Perth to Cocos Island, capable of two thousand letters a minute, against the present rate of six hundred letters. Press messages amounted to 22 per cent, of the company’s traffic, but the revenue from this source was only 2 per cent. Sir Campbell Stuart said the Pacific Cable Eoard had announced that the press rate was being reduced from - July 7 to sixpence a word, of which the board received 2Ad for transmitting over 3000 miles of land line and 8000 miles of cable for ordinary press and l-}d for deferred, which was the cheapest press rate in the world. Mr Robert Donald, who presided, stated that wireless and wireless telephony would be operative with Australia in eight months. The Anglo*Australian sixpenny cable press rate operates from July 7 in the Empire.

Mr Denison-Pender advocated the co-operation of wireless and cables. He was prepared to negotiate an agreement, with the. wireless companies as regards rates and other matters. It was estimated that, on the present basis the Eastern Cable Company lost £40,000 in revenue as a resuit of the reduction in the ordinary rate to Australia because the people were taking advantage of deferred rates.