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F0RTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT
OF
THE BOARD OF WORKS
FOR THE
WANDSWORTH DISTRICT,
Being for the Year ended 25th March, 1899.
telephone The Conference on this subject convened
service. by the London County Council, to which
reference was made in the last annual report, was held
on the 14th June. The Conference also considered the
subject of Generating Stations for the supply of Electricity
in bulk, and the following resolutions were
passed, viz.:—
THE TELEPHONE SERVICE.
1.—"That in the opinion of this Conference the present telephone
service of the London area, as supplied by the National Telephone
Company, is both inefficient and inadequate; that the charges, as
compared with those made by the same Company in the provinces, are
much too high, and that these disadvantages to London are largelydue
to the abandonment by the Post Office of that principle of
competition which was expressly adopted prior to 1892 for the protection
of telephone users."
2.—"That this Conference views with alarm the action of the
Post Office in using, for the benefit of the National Telephone Company,
its special powers as to the breaking up of streets, as instanced
in the recent case of the Commissioners of Sewers and the Post
Office; and urges the Select Committee on Telephones, which is now