# Telegram Tariff Committee Report
1. This Committee, having carefully considered the cost of telegraphy and the rates charged between the Far East and Europe, are strongly of opinion that the existing Tariff is needlessly high and tends to prevent that expansion of business which, with greater facilities of communication, would inevitably take place.
2. The rate charged between London and Hongkong is relatively much higher than that ruling for many other countries, as the following figures will show:
Country Distance (miles) Tariff s. d. South Australia 12,000 4.9 Hongkong 9,800 5.6 Cyprus 3,000 6/ Malta 2,280 4 San Francisco 6,000 1.6This list does not exhaust the comparisons, but those given will suffice to indicate the very great differences existing. Thus, while South Australia is more than two thousand miles further distant from London than Hongkong, the rate thither is 9d. per word less, while Cyprus, which is nearly one-third the distance from England, enjoys a rate about equal to one-tenth of that of the tariff to Hongkong. Malta, which is over two thousand miles distant from England, pays even less, the rate being only 4d. per word. The tariff to San Francisco is also proportionately much lower.
3. Making all due allowances for payments for messages passing over sections of foreign lines, there can be no room for doubt that the Telegraph Companies could considerably reduce the existing rates, and there is as little doubt that the increased traffic would in great measure, if not entirely, make up for the diminished profit on the messages.
4. This Committee are further strongly of opinion that, if necessary to reduce the cost of telegraphing, the Telegraph Companies should combine to make more use of existing land lines, over which, save in exceptional cases, they would be allowed to transmit messages at low rates, as is now done, for example, between London and Constantinople. If telegrams can be despatched in Australia over a distance of three thousand miles for a penny a word, the same thing can surely be done in other more thickly populated countries.
5. The time has now arrived when substantial reductions must be made in the telegraph tariffs, or an effort will have to be made to destroy the monopoly which at present works inimically to the interests of trade in the Far East; and this Chamber will be prepared to join a movement having for its object the purchase by the Imperial Government of all cables connecting the outlying sections of the British Empire, to the end that a reasonable rate, within the reach of all, may be substituted for the present almost prohibitive charge.