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Show Good News For Farmers i No one appreciates the tcle- phone more than the farmers, j Therefore, the report that thous-i thous-i ands of independent telephone j companies have joined with the I Bell system in the creation of a joint committee of telephone men ! to work on extending and im-I im-I proving farm telephone service, I comes as good news indeed to j rural sections. Spokesmen for the i committee said: ! "As soon as our demands are reduced, we propose to resume j and expand our research effort i and, along with it, the intensive program for extending farm service ser-vice which has been carried on before the outbreak of hostilities. "Over one-half million miles of telephone 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 existing lines. Since 1935, more than 500,000 ad-I ad-I ditional families in rural areas have become telephone subscribers an increase of 35 per cent. One of the major objectives is to continue con-tinue this upward trend by making mak-ing the service over existing lines' increasingly valuable and attractive. This the industry intends to do to the limit of its ability. "A second major objective is to extend service at reasonable cost to families not now reached by existing lines. Telephone industry indus-try research in the last several years has successfully developed new construction materials and methods which substantially lower the cost of building wire lines to addition, work was started by the industry in 1938 to develop a practical system of transmitting telephone conversations over electric elec-tric power lines . . . before this work was interrupted by the war, it was clear that a suitable system of this kind could be produced. "The telephone companies also plan to study the possible application appli-cation of microwave radio systems sys-tems to rural telephone service and to make use of this and any other new methods which will be helpful in giving service to the farmer." |