COMPANIES ENDORSE WIRELESS MERGER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18772, 30 May 1929, Page 9

COMPANIES ENDORSE WIRELESS MERGER.

(United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright). (Received May 30, 11.55 a.m.) LONDON, May 29. At a meeting of Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, Lord Inverforth, who presided, recalled that the Government took the exploitation of Imperial beam wireless out of the hands of the company, which invented and developed the system, and made it a Post Office monopoly. The Government license to the Marconi Company excluded its participation in wireless telegraphy to the rest of the Empire. In the circumstances the only revenue the company could hope to derive from the beam service was the royalty of 61 per cent on the gross traffic. It also became certain that as Marconi’s foreign services developed the cable companies would not sit quietly under wireless competition, but would embark on a rate war which would certainly have reduced their revenue and been even more damaging to the Marconi Company. He believed that the establishment of one comprehensive system of Imperial communications would form a landmark in the history of world communications.

Resolutions authorising the merger were carried unanimously. At a meeting of the Eastern Telegraph Company Mr Denison Pender said that the invention of beam wireless resulted in the establishment by the British Government of beam wireless communication in competition with one of the most remunerative fields—telegraphic correspondence If the cable rates were reduced to the wireless rates and recovered the traffic previously lost to the beam the Government would reduce the rates still further. Resolutions for the merger were carried.—Australian Press Asso-ciation-United Service.