ENG-1962 — Page 314

COMMUNICATIONS

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three stamps (10 cents, 20 cents and 50 cents). In October the new definitive multi-colour issue (five cents to $20) was placed on sale; this featured the Annigoni portrait of HM the Queen and was well received. The $20 stamp was singled out for inclusion in the souvenir sheet of Britain's National Stamp Exhibition to be held in March 1963. The exhibition at the City Hall in December was a further part of the centenary commemoration and was the first stamp exhibition ever held on this scale in Hong Kong. Stamps worth $500,000 were on display and the exhibition, opened by the Officer Administering the Government, was honoured by the loan of exhibits from the collection of HM the Queen.

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TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Owing to the increasingly important part played by the wireless division in the supervision of telecommunication activities in the Colony, the division was re-organized as the telecommunications division at the beginning of the 1962-3 financial year. Technical assistance and advice on the telecommunication requirements of other Government departments covered a wide field from tele- phones and sound reproduction to VHF radio and radar. Figures for all licences issued under the Telecommunications Ordinance continued to rise (see Appendix X). During 1962 there was also a general increase in the traffic handled by all the three principal telecommunication services of Cable and Wireless Limited-tele- graph, radiotelephone and telex.

Telegraph. Twenty-seven direct international telegraph circuits were operated with various countries. More than three million telegrams were despatched, received and relayed.

Radiotelephone. New services were established to Iceland, Faroe Islands, British Guiana, the Leeward and Windward Islands, and to three more principal cities in South Korea. A new reply service was also instituted between Jesselton and Norway via Hong Kong. Schedules were extended to meet increased demands in the Hong Kong/Saigon, Hong Kong/Australia and Hong Kong/India serv- ices. The local telephone exchange can now be connected through Cable and Wireless to 84 countries.

Telex. This comparatively young service, still only in its fourth year, has expanded very rapidly and by the end of the year Hong Kong was linked to 53 countries. Any telex subscriber in Hong