By Helen Horback
Early in August this year all Whitehorse telephone subscribers will have dial phones. Working like Trojans in preparation for this major utilities advance are a number of English technicians and the local CNT staff.
Going in is a 1600-line fully-automatic phone exchange, employing all the latest devices in switching equipment. The system will not be hooked up to its full capacity immediately. There will be equipment for about 800 lines in the downtown area and 650 lines up the hill, for Hillcrest, Camp Takhini and Valleyview.
The change over to a complete dial system will mean speeded up service locally, CNT officials say. It will leave telephone operators free to handle long distance
calls only, as well as doing away with the delay in calling the old North West switch-board. The automatic exchange will also be set up for nation-wide toll dialing, when that comes into effect.
Shortly after CNT took over the local telephone system on November 1, 1958, a survey of the area was made to plan for the dial conversion. Cable installation has been going on since that time to prepare for the new system.
Now being installed in the basement of the 918 repeater station, the dial equipment was all manufactured in England. To Pete Oerlemans, CNT's inside plant inspector, it's "beautiful", but to a layman the equipment is a mysterious maze of multi-colored wires, twined together on big metal frames.
Painted a soft powder green, the frames or "bays" as they are called, measure 8½ feet high, four feet wide and four feet long. Each bay weighs 1,500 pounds by itself. Additional switching equipment installed adds another 400 pounds.
Via Panama
Packed in 36 mahogany-lined crates, the equipment left England February 2 and arrived in Whitehorse April 12, via the Panama Canal.
In charge of the complicated project is Senior Installation Engineer K. A. Wilkinson of Ericsson Telephone Ltd., the English manufacturers. The Canadian branch of the firm is Telco Canada. With Mr. Wilkinson are a group of highly skilled installation technicians, all sent over from England.
New Directory
Along with the dial exchanges locally, subscribers will also have a new telephone directory. Now busy compiling this are CNT personnel, who will have the directory published and in the hands of subscribers before CNT takes over the new
system. Their deadline is August first.
Still another innovation for telephone users here will be smartly colored phones, available in red, Airforce blue, beige, green or two-tone grey. These can be installed either as wall or desk phones and will cost only a few cents extra each month.
Rate Changes
On completion, the dial system will mean changes in rates, local CNT commercial manager Bill McDerment said recently. Private line rates will be very attractive, he mentioned, and business firms will benefit from lower rates. A few rates will be increased, mostly
those affecting homes up the hill, where subscribers have always paid less than downtown users, Mr. McDerment stated.
