TELEPHONE POPULAR

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 158, 20 June 1935, Page 7

TELEPHONE POPULAR

Increase in Connections

NEARLY BACK TO PEAK TOTAL

Hastings Shares in the Gain

Further evidence of consistent improvement in business conditions in the Dominion is provided by the Post Office record for May of the highest monthly gain in new telephone connections since December, 1930, when a decline commenced to show itself. The upward movement haa been going on for 22 mouths and last month’s net gain m new subscribers, 360, brings the total number ut telephone subscribers in the Dominion to within of per cent, of the highest point ever recorded. The position in Hastings is particularly encouraging, remarked the postmaster, Mr A. I’elJow, to a “Tribune” reporter to-day. Owing to the depression and the earthquake, he said, the Hastings telephone exchange lost 300 subscribers, but during the past 18 months U steady recovery has been maintained, and that loss has been overtaken to the extent of 101. The position at present is that Hastings is only eight per eent. below the December 1930 figures, and when that position is compared with the Dominion increase of five per cent, it shows a remarkable recovery when all factors are taken into consideration.

Since January of this year the net gain in new subscribers is approximately fifty, and the present total on the Hastings exchange is 2133. Mr Fellow went on to say that one aspect of the increasing popularity of the telephone was that the more subthere were, the more there were for subscribers to communicate with. If, for example, a Hastings subscriber was one of only a thousand subscribers, the telephone had not nearly the same potential value to Jjim as it would have if the number of subscribers were increased to two thousand. If every one of a subscriber's friends was on the telephone, the telephone was worth more to him than it there were only half-a-dozen. There was an increasing tendency among business people, Mr Fellow added, to improve and extend their office telephone equipment either by means of extensions or by the interphone system. There was now a higher grade of equipment being used, and the old days when the best and most convenient systems were looked upon as something of a luxury’ had now passed. The telephone was taking its proper place as a necessity and an economy. Small farmers especially were making an increased use of the telephone, and a number of country subscribers had formed themselves into groups for the purpose of having the automatic partyline service made available to them. Under such a ey stein party-line subscribers, up to the number of four, received their own calls and no others, as a skilful use of the nrinciple of frequency gave a separate identity to each of the four calls that could be made on the line. Seven Maraekakaho subscribers had recently been connected with the automatic exchange, and that process was going on constantly. In conclusion, Mr Fellow remarked that the plant in the Hastings exchange cost more than £50,000, and that it was up to the standard of any other automatic plant in the Dominion.