77. The telephone service is fully automatic and is provided from 42 exchanges situated throughout the territory and on the major outlying islands. The rate of demand for telephone service in Hong Kong con- tinues at a high level and further new exchanges and large extensions to existing exchanges are in progress and in the planning stage.
78. At 31st March, 1971, there were 607,362 telephones in service, which was an increase of 90,378 over the figure at the end of March 1970. This represents a penetration factor of approximately 15.37 telephones per 100 population, which is the highest in Asia with the exception of Japan.
International Telephone and Telegraph Service
79. Overseas communications are provided by Cable and Wireless Ltd., the services being offered including public telegraph, international telephones, telex, ship-shore radio, private telegraph circuits and private communications networks. These services are provided by means of a complex of various systems which include telephone cables, satellite circuits, tropospheric scatter, H.F. and V.H.F. radio. A message com- puter is used to handle the large volume of messages which flows in and out of Hong Kong each day.
Systems
'SEACOM' Telephone Cable
80. The SEACOM telephone cable links Hong Kong westwards to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and eastwards to Guam and Australia where it links with COMPAC for the route to Canada and onwards to Europe. At Guam some of the channels are fed into other cables to give high quality circuits to Japan, the Philippines and the U.S.A., from where services extend to various parts of the world. The cable may be used for up to 80 voice channels each of which may be used to carry 22 50-baud telegraph circuits.
Satellite Earth Station
81. The Earth Station at Stanley Peninsula works via the communi- cations satellite stationed over the Pacific Ocean which can re-transmit signals over an area approximately equivalent to a third of the earth's surface. The 90 foot, fully steerable, dish is designed to work normally
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