EXPENSIVE TALKS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 104, 4 May 1934, Page 5

EXPENSIVE TALKS

LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY. CALLS FROM AUSTRALIA. SYDNEY, April 19. A New York business man spent £l4l m telephone fees to address his representatives in Sydney Calls between an Australian broker and his London office in two days totalled £152. . . . . A son spoke across the world to his mother after an absence of 15 years. Details such as these of conversations that fly across the world add romance to the dry records of the Overseas Telephone Services that are kept by the Postmaster-General’s Department. Each Australian telephone subscriber may now talk with any one of 32,000,000 subscribers in other parts of the world.

“One of the most interesting features of the overseas telephone services between Australia and the rest of the world/’ said the Director of Postal Services, Mr. H. P. Brown, “is the variety of subjects covered by the calls— and the prices. Of the calls connected, 72 per cent, are between Australia and Great Britain and 17 per cent, between Australia and New Zealand. There is thrill associated with with a conversation, say, with Valparaiso, Rio de Janeiro, Jeiusalem, Calcutta, Batavia or Johannesburg, or to a Western ocean liner ploughing her way through the Atlantic outward bound to New York. ”

Mr. Brown said that no one had, as yet, lodged a call to Latvia, Lithuania, Rumania, or to the Canary Islands, or the Island of Majorca, although test calls made by officials of the department had demonstrated that not only was conversation to these places possible, but the quality of transmission was quite suitable for commercial conversation. On one occasion, the Australian branch of an association wished to make a representation to its president iu London, and spent £92 in telephone fees in so doing. Loud-speakers and microphones were installed at each end. A call to a motor firm in England was valued at £B4, and this was followed the»next night by a second call costing £4O, and two nights later by a further £4O call to the same firm. A stockbroker spent £96 in three days on calls to the United States. The department is still wondering about the Afelbourne business man who ordered a call to Los Angeles, and spoke for only If minutes. He paid £ll Ils for this call. >He was entitled to speak for three minutes. Conversation with overseas countries from Australia is cheapest to New Zealand, at a cost of £3 for a minimum of three minutes. Java comes next at £4 10s, while the most costly are Canada (fourth zone), Mexico, South America (third zone), and America (fourth zone), each of which cost £lO 16s. , It costs £6 18s to call the Vatican State, Rome; and £7 10s to call the Canary Islands and Palestine.