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Show Phone Lines Predicted Loaded for Rural Communities Telephone Bells will sound like Christmas Bells in many Cedar City homes as they announce a happy greeting of "Hello, Mother! Hello, Grandpa! Merry Christmas Christ-mas . . ." from loved ones far away. "Over seven million people will be placing long distance calls on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to Mother or Aunt Mary, Sisters or Brothers," Dean Williams, Wil-liams, Manager here for the Mountain States Telephone Company, Com-pany, said today. Long distance telephone lines are always busy on Christmas, not because of the large number of calls placed, but rather because be-cause of the places called. More than seven million calls are completed com-pleted without delay almost every business day throughout the Bell System, but most of these are from one metropolitan area to another. On Christmas, however, most calls go to small communities throughout the na- tion. While there are hundreds of lines from Salt Lake, Ogden, and Provo td larger cities of th country, coun-try, there are relatively few from there to the small rural communities, commun-ities, where Dad and Mother still live. There may be many unused circuits between larger cities, but the few lines out to the small towns become overloaded and calls must wait their turn. "It would be Impractical fori the Telephone Companies to In-stall In-stall hundreds of new lines to be used only one or two days of each year," Williams said. So we do the best we can by tempor-1 ary rearrangements of circuits to complete as many calls as possible without a delay. I Williams said that holiday calls can be completed more quickly If the persons placing them would call by number and call station-to-station. It takes extra time for the information operator in a distant city to look up the number o complete a person-to-person calL 1 "Reduced long distance rates will i'3 Into efect at 6:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve and last throughout through-out Christmas Day and until 4:30 a.m. on December 26th. While everyone likes to take advantage of reduced rates, one of the surest sur-est ways of geting a call through ' during this busy time I to place It Christmas Eve before V- j0 o'clock even though It costs a little more. "A call on reduced rates Sunday, December 20th, might be given consideration," Williams said. |