Communications

The great U. S. communication systems are: 1) American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (telephones); 2) International Telephone & Telegraph Co. (telegraph, cable, wireless, foreign telephone); 3) Western Union Telegraph Co. (telegraph, cable); 4) Radio Corporation of America (wireless telegraph, radio telephone). The four corporations are separate utilities and compete against each other for the U. S. communication business.

Their lust for business last week befuddled the much badgered Federal Radio Commission. Two of the companies--the I. T. & T. (through its subsidiary Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co.) and R. C. A. demanded the right to set up wireless telegraph stations and sell service between cities in continental U. S.

Heretofore, with a minor exception, they have kept their business to sending messages over seas--to stations abroad, to ships on the oceans or Great Lakes, to coastal shipping points.

That one exception is on the Pacific Coast. Between Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., the Mackay Companies (now part of the. I. T. & T.) operate a land wireless system. It is the only continental commercial radio service in the world.

The I. T. & T. wants to make such land wireless service cover the continent. Through Charles Evans Hughes Jr. it demanded of the Federal Radio Commission 60 short wave wireless channels.*

R. C. A. declared that it needed 32 point-to-point stations at once, wanted the right to 67, would like 148 all told. Colonel Maton Davis, R. C. A. general counsel, was the spokesman. He had persuasive technical men fortify his case.

The members of the Federal Radio Commission last week listened to these demands. They listened also to two other and similar demands--from Inter-City Radio Telegraph Co. of Cleveland for 50 stations, from Universal Wireless Communication Co. of Buffalo, a new concern, for 125 stations./-

These demands put the Federal Commission in quandary. Wireless experts figure that 208 short wave wireless channels can be used for communications within the U. S. Of that number 43 are now being used by foreign countries and so are forbidden to U. S. commercializers. Not enough channels are available to satisfy even the present four petitioners.

Then there is the interstate business that these companies want to do. In such respect the radio commissioners realized that they must be circumspect in their judgments--not to infringe on the surveillance and authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Also there is the maintenance of competition, the avoidance of monopoly, which the Federal Trade Commissioners like to oversee. Already the Postal Telegraph (I. T. & T. subsidiary) and Western Union are sending telegrams and photograms over Bell Telephone wires. I. T. & T. has not abandoned its hope of buying control of R. C. A. Yet the appearance of competition seems certain to persist. Transoceanic wireless has forced the reduction of cable rates until the two services now charge practically the same prices. What land wireless rates will do to land wire rates no one before the Federal Radio Commission last week could estimate. President Simon of the Inter-City Radio Telegraph Co. stated that his rates between Great Lake ports were 20% less than the telegraph companies' rates.

All these demands, ideas and implications the radio commission could not digest immediately. It adjourned for bureaucratic, secret, nonetheless conscientious, deliberation.

*Short wireless waves, pulsating about 900,000 times a second, are practically as efficient as land telegraph wires in transmitting messages, photographs, facsimiles, written matter (checks, messages, etc.).

/-Montgomery Ward & Co. and Cudahy Packing Co. both asked for short wave channels to transact business between their branches over the country. Anderson, Clayton & Co., potent cotton brokers, asked for a channel between their Houston and Manhattan offices.