WIRELESS

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 30 December 1926, Page 7

WIRELESS

(Per Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, Dec. 28. The General Post Office announces that it is hoped to inaugurate a public wireless telephone service with the* New York Exchange early in January. The caller will be able ,to use a private telephone in the ordinary way, giving the American exchange ana number, also the name of the person to whom it is desired to speak. If a connection is made with the desired person, the charge will be £l5, for three minutes. If the desired person is not available, the caller can converse with au alternative person, at the £l5 rate. If he declines to do this, he pays 40s for the connection with the desired number, but if not connected, therewith, he pays nothing. If atmospherics interfere with the conversation, an allowance will ho made. The Post Office says the measures taken to cope with fading and atmospherics, represent the results of three years’ research experiments, giving clarity of reception, which was not imagined possible, even so lately as 1923. The voices at each end automatically control the switches, enabling the conversation to be carried on, as on ordinary land lines. The caller in London gets the Trunk Exchange, where he is connected with Rugby, and thence, by wireless, with Houlton (Maine), thence over five hundred miles of land line to the New York long-distance exchange, where he is connected with the local exchange and the number of the desired person, whose >eply comes, via Long Island, to Wroughton, near Swindon, theme to London and the caller. The Post Office considers £l5 a reasonable charge, seeing that Rugby wireless station cost £500,000. LONDON, Dec. 29. The wireless telephone charges between England and America are £l5 for three minutes, and £5 for each extra minute.