§ SIR HENRY TYLERasked the Postmaster General, What progress has been made during the present year in reducing the numbers of Post Office overhead wires in the Metropolitan area, and to inform, the House of the numbers and lengths of such wires on the 1st January, 1st July, and 1st November 1882, as well as of the numbers and length, of wires laid under ground at the same periods within the same area?
§ MR. FAWCETTWhen the hon. Member asked me for information as to the extent of overground and underground wires in June of last year I stated that within a radius of four miles of the General Post Office there were belonging to the Department in March of that year 4,388 miles of underground wires and 500 of overground. At the present time the underground wires within the same radius have been increased to 4,953, and the overground to only 519, and this latter small increase is chiefly due to the doubling of existing wires, in consequence of private telegraph wires being converted into telephone wires. Within a radius of a mile of the Post Office, which of course includes the most crowded part of London, the proportion of underground to overground wires is still larger, the figures being 1,822 miles of the former to not quite 58 of the latter. I have detailed Returns, which show that by far the greater number of 1106 the overground wires belong, not to the Post Office, but to private telephone and other Companies. Thus, over one thoroughfare in the City there are 97 overground wires, and only three belong to the Post Office.