LONG TELEPHONE LINE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19952, 20 November 1926, Page 23

LONG TELEPHONE LINE.

TOWNSVILLE TO MELBOURNE.

SECOND LONGEST IN THE "WORLD. (From Ode Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY. November 11. . "What is claimed to be the second longest trunk telephone line m the world and certainly the longest in the southern hemisphere was opened for public calls this week by the Commonwealth Telephone Department between Townsville (North Queensland) and Melbourne. The length of the new lino is 2017 miles, almost the length of Australia from north to south. Eventually the department plans to open a line for t calls from Cairns to Adelaide, a distance of 3000 miles. The line is available for traffic 24 hours a day. During the almost instantaneous flash of the sound waves across the continent, they will be amplified by highly sensitised instruments at 10 intermediate stations at Bundaberg, nockhampton, Mackay, Bowen, Brisbane, Glen Innes, Maitland Sydney, Goulburn, and Wagga. At each of these stations a special staff is re* quired to look after the instruments. The fee for three minutes’ conversation over the new line is 15s Bd, which is slightly less than half the cost of a similar call over the same length of line in the United States. If it were possible to give such a call in Britain the tariff would be 265. The New York-San Francisco line, by the way, is the only line known to the Director of Postal Services hero to be longer than ths Townsville-Melbourne service. While the Post Office does not expect much traffic over the full length of line in its early stages, it is believed that calls over the Townsvillc-Brisbane and Xownsville-Sydncy sections will cut down losses on the fulllength line. '