Montana labor news., 1944-11-30
PHONE COMPANIES
TO ADVANCE
FARM SERVICE

A jdint Committee of representatives
of Bell and Independent operating tele-
phone companies throughout the United
States has been formed to advance the
Nation Wide Postwar Program which
the various telephone Companies have
been working on individually to extend
and improve farm telephone service, it
was announced today. Co-Chairman Of
the committee are John P. Boylan, Presi-
dent of the United States Independent
Telephone Association the national or
g"anization of the thousands of indepen-
dent telephone companies, and Keith S.
McHugh, vice president of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company re-
presenting the Bell operating companies,
Rural Telephone Service is more high
ly developed in this country, under the
American System of private enterprise,
than in any other country in the world, y
Mr.. Boylan and Mr.. McHugh said today
in a statement issued by them for the
Committee.
However, it is by no means as highly
developed as we in the industry want to
see it, and the industry intends to do
everything in its power to provide more
service, and better service, at a cost
which the farmer can afford.
Since operating telephone companies
throughout the whole country have been
working on this problem, a representa-
tive Joint committee has been formed
consisting of a number of their most eX-
perienced officials. We believe that the
application of new facilities and methods
which were under Development by the
industry before the demands of war in
t%errupted our research and construction
program will help to bring telephone
service to many new farm customers. As
soon as war demands are reduced, we
propos to resume and expand our re-
search effort and, along with it, the eX-
tensive program for extending farm SER
vice which was being carried on before
the outbreak Of hostilities.
over one-half million miles of tele-
phone pole lines serving rural areas have
already been built so that more than
two thirds of all rural families in the
United States can be served from exist
ing lines. Since 1885 more than 100000
additional families in rural areas have
become telephone subscribers-an in
crease of IS percent. one of the major
detectives is to continue this upward
trend by making the service over exist
ing lines increasingly valuable and at
tractive.
This industry intends to do the limit
Of its ability.
A second major objective is to extend
service at reasonable cost to families not
now reached by existing lines. The tele-
phone industry research in the last sew
eral years has successfully developed
new construction materials and methods
which substantially lower the cost of
building wire lines to areas not previous
ly reached.
In addition, work was started by the
industry in 1884 to develop a practical
system Of transmitting telephone con-
~versations over electric power lines. A
similar system can be sent over telephone
lines to increase their capacity. h
so-caned rural carrier system transmits
a very high frequency current over the
wires. From 1910 on, experiments with
this system for telephone service over
rural power lines were carried forward in
a cooperative effort of Bell Telephone
Laboratories and the Rural Electrified
ton Administration. Before this work
was interrupted by the war it was clear
that a suitable system of this kind could
be produced.
one practical effect of these develop
ments is to make it physically possible
to furnish telephone service wherever
there are rural power lines and no tele-
phone lines. The telephone companies
plan, in cooperation with REA coopera-
tives and with power companies serving
rural territory to determine the full ex-
tent to which rural carrier telephone
service ear be used economically and ef-
fectively.
The telephone companies also plan to
study the possible application Of mic
rowave radio systems to rural telephone
service and to make use Of this and any
other new methods which will be helpful
in service to the farmer"