Post_Office_1971-1972 — Page 20

Further new exchanges and large extensions to existing exchanges are in progress and in the planning stage.

85. On 31st March, 1972, there were 713,106 telephones in service which was an increase of 105,744 over the figure at the end of March 1971. This represents a penetration factor of approximately 17.5 tele- phones per 100 population, which is the highest in Asia with the exception of Japan.

International Telephone and Telegraph Service

86. 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, tropospherics scatter, H.F., and V.H.F., radio. A mes- sage computer is used to handle the large volume of message which flows in and out of Hong Kong each day.

Systems

'SEACOM' Telephone Cable

87. 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

88. The earth station at Stanley Peninsula now has two dishes, one facing East and one facing West. They work via satellites stationed over the Pacific and Indian Oceans respectively, each of which can retransmit to an area covering approximately a third of the earth's surface. These dishes are fully steerable and are designed to work normally in winds of 50 m.p.h., with gusts of up to 70 m.p.h., and to survive winds of up to 210 m.p.h. in the stowed position.

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