Services Congested Most of the Day Telephone calls both in the International Settlement and the French Concession and to the City Government areas reached-an unprecedented peak yesterday. A fifty per cent. increase in local calls and a hundred per cent. increase to calls to Greater Shanghai was the minimum estimate given by an official of the Shanghai Telephone Company in an interview with the "North-China Daily News" yesterday afternoon.
As a result, many thought their telephones were out of order, as no dialling tone resulted when receivers were lifted off their hooks. The official explained that the machines in the various exchanges are built to handle a normal rush-hour peak load. Normally, there are always enough lines available to handle the traffic, An average of 400,000 inter-Settlement calls and 10,000 calls to extra-Settlement areas are handled each day, he so Yesterday, however, the load was abnormal, and it is estimated that no less than 600,000 inter-Settlement and 20,000 extra-Settlement calls were handled by the different exchanges scattered over the city. This, he said, explained the delay many experienced in getting a free line. Emphasizing the fact that this represented an "emergency: load," the Telephone Company spokesman asked the public to give its co-opera tion by keeping the number of calls down to the bare minimum, only using the telephone when absolutely necessary.
Not only were local telephone lines congested, however, but so were the long-distance lines to interior cities. During the day it was practically impossible to get through to Kiangwan, and up to a very late hour last night absolutely impossible to get either Hangchow or Nanking on the telephone, those handling these services Feporting absolute congestion on all ines.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.