Your Committee joined in the general outery against the inefficient cies of the local telephone service and although no official reply has been received to the Chamber's letter, I am informed that many changes have been made by the Telephone Company which are designed to bring about the desired improvements. 3 In this connexion, you will be interested in the following letter received to-day from Mr. Cole, the Telephone Co's engineer-in-chief and general manager:
"Ju reference to your remarks at our last general meeting and confirming my conversation to you yesterday, the improvement which I think you" will agree has taken place during the past year has been due principally to the fact that the extensions to our exchanges and the replacement of the aerial wires by underground cables which were then in contemplation have been completed, which we were urnable to do before owing to the difficulty in obtaining material. The result of extending the switchboards is that more operators can placed in the Exchanges, and therefore can give better attention to subscribers; also automatic supervision of the operators at all the Exchanges has Leen introduced, and we have also been able to obtain additions to our technical staff from Home.
"The new automatic apparatus for the cast exchange is being shipped in a few ocks' time, and we are also issuing pacifications for an extension: of the central exchange on the automatic system.
"During the year between 2,000 and 3,000 tests have' been made: by a specie)
actor, standing by the telephone ile the subscriber himself made the call. with the following results Answering. Clearing. Shanghai: 4.8 sec. 3.4 Bec, London: 6.1 sec. 5.6 sec. which show that in comparison with the latest London figures the actual times of answering a call and clearing a connexion are better in Shanghai tian in London."
CHINESE AFFAIRS,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.