Introduction 1 1 



connection. A British trader receiving the same inquiry would 

 be at a great disadvantage : the delay and uncertainty in getting 

 through would probably deter him from using the telephone at all ; 

 if not, he would have to pay the Belgian or German charges many 

 times over. This is not what the public wants or ought to be 

 called upon to submit to. 



It has been said that the British public does not care for 

 telephony, and that it would not in any case take advantage of 

 cheap rates to the same extent as continental peoples do. The 

 author considers that this constitutes a most unfair and un- 

 warrantable prejudgment of what the British public would do if it 

 were placed on an equality as regards facilities with other peoples. 



What has the telephone service, even in the best conducted 

 exchanges, hitherto meant, and what does it mean to-day, to the 

 British subscriber ? Simply that he may call up, and be called 

 up by, other subscribers in his own town and, to a limited extent, 

 other towns also. He may also be called up by non-subscribers 

 speaking from public stations (call offices) established, not at the 

 post and telegraph offices, where people naturally expect to find 

 them, but scattered anywhere where room for an instrument can 

 be found. Dealing with these facilities in the same manner as 

 the services rendered to the public by foreign administrations and 

 companies are dealt with in this present book, it may be said that 

 the British subscriber enjoys for his money four services, to wit : 



i. Local exchange intercourse. 2. Internal trunk line inter- 

 course. 3. Public telephone station intercourse. 4. Forwarding 

 and receiving his telegrams by telephone (in some of the large 

 towns only). 



Now, let it be thoroughly grasped what foreign subscribers 

 obtain for subscriptions which sometimes amount to a third or 

 less of the British. 



AUSTRIA. i. Local exchange. 2. Internal trunks. 3. Inter- 

 national trunks. 4. Telephoning of telegrams. 5. Local tele- 

 phonogram l service (ten words for 2^.). 6. Telephoning of 



1 In Austria and Switzerland a message telephoned by a subscriber to the cen- 

 tral office to be written down and delivered by messenger to non-subscriber is 

 officially known as a phonogram, a word which, without official authority, has 

 also been adopted in the same sense in several other countries. In the United 

 Kingdom and the United States, at least, phonogram means the record of the 



