Little Prospect Yet Of More Telephones

Northern Advocate, 24 August 1945, Page 8

Little Prospect Yet Of More Telephones

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The Acting-Postmaster General (Hon. F. Jones)- said today that there was little immediate prospect of connecting any large number of waiting applicants, although the supply of material for telephone connections had been slightly eased. Net only was there insufficient material for carrying out line construction work, but many months'of restoration work following the recent severe storms in the Canterbury district would absorb many linesmen. Although priority would be given those whose business was high up in order of essentiality, even these could not be given service in certain towns. A more serious problem, particularly in larger towns, was the lack of switching equipment. Automatic exchanges in the four centres, Hamilton, Palmerston North and elsewhere, were loaded almost to maximum capacity.

The Minister said that, to ensure more equitable rationing of new connections, it had been decided that until normal conditions returned, a residential subscriber moving away from an address would not be permitted to transfer- his telephone to an incoming tenant or anyone else. Instead, relinquished connections would be allocated to the next most deserving applicant on the waiting list, but there would be no restriction on the transfer of a business telephone from one businessman to another, nor on a person moving to a new address in the same city taking his telephone connection with him.