The Hull telephone service, according to a correspondent of the
Westminster Gazette, charges a business man £13 6s. 8d. a year, and a private person £9 3s. 4d. a year, for the unlimited use of his telephone. For £8 a year in Hull one may have a telephone and 500 calls, with additional calls at 6s. 8d. a hundred. Yet the Hull service for the year 1919-1920 showed a balance to the good of £17,161, which would presumably cover the interest on capital and sinking fund. It would of course be wrong to compare the telephone rates in Hull and London, for the London service must be far more costly to instal and maintain. But there is no doubt that the Hull municipality, like the Glasgow municipality of twenty years ago, has cheapened and popularized the telephone to a degree that the Post Office has never attained, and probably never will attain, in any large provincial town. It is a great pity that the municipalities were not encouraged to develop the telephone locally when the National Telephone Company was bought by the State.
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