The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-08-15
JERSEY PHONE CALL
TAKES 1870 MINUTES
One Could Travel to Red Bank
in Sc Minutes Less Than
That.
SERVICE CAUSES HOWLS
Company Promises Improve
ment, but Meantime the
Public Suffers.

to choose one of a hundred Jersey towns,
is one hour and fourteen minutes from
Manhattan. BY telephone yesterday 1t
was just two hours and ten minutes from
lower town.
In other words, the man who wished
10 make business or social call in a
hurry at Red Bank could have travelled
there faster than his voice would have
winged" In Justice to the New York
Telephone Company it should be stated
that for the last month or so it has
taken only an hour to get a call through
TO various nearby Jersey towns and
cities, but why an ordinary call of this
nature, not far enough out of town to
come under the heading of long distance.
should take 50 long is a matter which
which was not easily explained yester-
day at Is Dey street. In the post war
reconstruction OF its shattered service
the service to New Jersey towns has APP
parently been left out of the telephone
company's reckoning.
Inland Towns Suffer Also.
The blight Of poor service has struck
both the inland and coast towns of New
Jersey-Bound Brook, Elizabeth, Plain
field and Paterson suffering equally with
Long Branch. Asbury Park and Allen
hurst. That the telephone company real
ICES that there is something rotten in
the State of New Jersey is shown by
the fact that 1t is advertising that i'm
provements are being rushed.
TO meet the abnormal demands for
telephone service In northern New Jer-
sey," says a statement recently pub
lished in some of the Jersey local sheets
I'VE are now carrying out a great pro-
gramme OF expansion that calls for an
NJ L.
10000 for new construction. We are
building new central office switchboards
and adding to existing switchboaTds. We
are placing thousands of miles of wire
and training hundreds of young women
for central Office positions"
The advertisement, possibly arising
from the companys guilty conscience,
warns the Jersey. telephoners that it
takes time to do all these things. 1t
also admits that things in Jersey are
not as they might be in the concluding
paragraph of the announcement:
In the meantime no effort will be
spared to hasten the day when we shall
again be able to handle all demands for
service on normal basis of quality"
At the office of the telephone company
yesterday no explanation could be se-
cured as TO why service was almost uni
formly poor throughout northern New
deed no one could be found to admit that
Jersey was any worse of than the other
places outside the city. although
harassed subscribers who have run the
emotional gauntlet from applications to
threats In getting a number assert that
Jerseys service is the rankest
You Have 1t, Then You Don't.
During the last month the Jersey ser
vice has been getting worse as the Jer-
sey coast and inland resorts filled to
capacity. Apparently little or no effort
was made by the local or division man
ayers to increase their service proper
tionately as the demands for wires in
creased. This, the telephone company
claims, has now been remedied II was
stated by a telephone official yesterday
just about the time one of THE SUMS
operators was engaged in the endurance
contest to get Red Bank that the service
has markedly improved during the last
two or three days. No such Improvement
has been noted by those on the calling
ends of the wires.
But 1t is not only the getting OF a
person on the wire that bothers the
residents of New Jersey or those in the
city who call them. Once the person is
actually on the wire the caller may get
only a word or so over the line before
the connection snaps and the whole
ritual of entreaty and threats must be
gone through all over again. Again, Jer-
sey wires seem infested with a disagree
able buzz which makes both parties feel
as If they were trying to drown the roar
of Niagara.
Just what causes the buzz is a matter
the helpless telephoner does not know
and does not care. What he seeks is a
conversation The matter of sudden
cutting OFF of connections during the
middle of a conversation is particularly
madden ng in the Jersey district, since 1t
sometimes takes evsn longer to splice up
the disconnected parties again than 1t
did to connect them originally.
Indefinite delay" is the usual ex