P COMMONWEALTH TELEPHONE CABLE PARTNERSHIP RIOR to 1956, intra-Commonwealth telecommunications had been carried either by submarine telegraph cable or by radio. However, by 1956 the British Post Office had solved the technical problems of using multi-channel submarine telephone cables to carry conversations over long distances and had come to an agreement with the Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corpora tion to lay a 60-channel cable between Britain and Canada. It thus became necessary to consider whether this Anglo-Canadian telephone cable (later named CANTAT) should form part of the existing Commonwealth telecommunications system and whether additional intra-Commonwealth telephone cables should be laid. These questions were considered by a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in London in July 1958; and it was recommended to Govern ments that a Commonwealth round-the-world telephone cable should be laid, section by section, Commonwealth Governments arranging between themselves to construct and finance particular sections as the need arose. The Conference was not able to recommend that these new telephone cables should be brought within the existing Commonwealth Telecommunications Partnership (q.v.) but proposed that they should be kept separate and should be operated under separate financial arrangements. These recommendations were endorsed by the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference held in Montreal in 1958 and were accepted by Commonwealth Governments. As a result of the recommendations of the Conference, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed to lay and jointly finance a telephone cable (called COMPAC) across the Pacific from Canada to Australia via Fiji and New Zealand, and set up a Management Committee, consisting of one representative of each Partner, to construct and operate it. Later, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia agreed to extend this cable (called SEACOM) to New Guinea, Hong Kong, Kota Kinabalu and Singapore, and set up a similar Management Committee for the purpose. The CANTAT cable was opened in 1961, COMPAC in 1964 and SEACOM in 1967. In 1966 management was unified under the Commonwealth Cable Management Committee consisting of representatives from the telecommunications authorities of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. This Committee meets from time to time in each of those countries and Hong Kong. One of the responsibilities of the Committee was administration of the financial arrangements for use of the telephone cables and certain microwave and tropospheric scatter systems. These arrangements, known as the second wayleave scheme, were similar to the first wayleave scheme of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Partnership (q.v.). On the recommendation of a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in 1972 both wayleave schemes were replaced, on 1 April, 1973, by a single unified accounting scheme embracing all telecommunications media and administered by the Commonwealth Tele communications Council. The departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth and the advent of satellite telecommunications make it now improbable that a round-the-world submarine telephone cable will be completed. COMMONWEALTH TELECOMMUNICATIONS PARTNERSHIP T HE first submarine telegraph cables linking what are now independent Commonwealth countries were laid by cable companies as commercial ventures and Governments were not directly concerned. However, because the cable companies were unwilling to meet the expense of laying a cable across the Pacific from Canada to Australia, the Governments of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and some of the Australian States agreed-largely as a result of the advocacy over many years of Sandford Fleming of the Canadian Pacific Railways—to subscribe money for a Pacific Telegraph Cable and set up in 1901 a representative Pacific Cable Board to construct and manage the cable, which was laid in 1902. In 1927 on the recommendation of an Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference, the various cable and wireless interests which then served the Commonwealth, including the Pacific Cable Board, were merged and a single operating Company later to be known as Cable and Wireless Ltd was set up. A representative Imperial Communications Advisory Committee was established to lay down the policy which should be followed by the Company. In 1945 a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference recommended that the assets of Cable and Wireless Ltd in the various Commonwealth countries should be nationalised. The recommendation was accepted by the Commonwealth Governments concerned, and in 1948 a Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement was drawn up to promote and co-ordinate the telecommunications services of the Commonwealth. Under the agreement, which was signed by the Governments of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Southern Rhodesia, the partner Governments agreed to operate their external telecommunications co-operatively with the advice of a Commonwealth Telecommunications Board in London, on which each was to be represented. In addition, a 'wayleave scheme' was eventually adopted under which each partner retains its annual wayleave revenue and incurs payment of common user costs in the same proportion as its wayleave revenue bears to the total wayleave revenue for the partnership. This practice contrasts with normal international telecommunications accounting, whereby a portion of the revenue collected for an international call or message is passed by the originating country to the terminal country (and any transit country concerned). The 1948 agreement was somewhat modified by a second Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement signed in 1963. On the recommendation of a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in 1965 and 1966 the partnership was re-constituted and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board was replaced by a new Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation with a Constitution* which provides for periodical Commonwealth Telecommunications Conferences at which any independent Commonwealth Government may be represented, a Commonwealth Telecommunications Council of serving telecommunications officials meeting at *Published in the United Kingdom by HMSO in March 1968 as Cmnd. 3547. least once a year and carrying on its business between meetings by correspon dence and a secretariat, the Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau (q))) in London. The Commonwealth Telecommunications Board was accordingly dissolved on 31st March 1969 by an Order in Council made under the Commonwealth Tele communications Act 1968. The Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreements were at the same time terminated and a new financial agreement between the Partner Governments in respect of the wayleave scheme, the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation Financial Agreement 1969, became operative. On the recommendation of a further Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in 1972 the wayleave scheme, and the second wayleave scheme of the Commonwealth Telephone Cable Partnership (q.v.), were replaced by a unified accounting scheme with effect from 1 April, 1973. The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation Financial Agreement 1969 was therefore superseded by a new Financial Agreement which entered into force on that date. The present partnership, which is concerned with satellite telecommunications as well as submarine telephone and telegraph cables and radio links, consists of the Governments of Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Botswana, Canada, Cyprus, The Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, the United Kingdom. and Zambia. COMMONWEALTH TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU 28 Pall Mall, London S.W.1 (01-930 5511) General Secretary: S. N. Kalra Chief of Systems: B. V. Dentskevich Chief of Operations: Dr F. L. Subaran Chief of Finance: J. B. Elliot Chief of Administration: C. A. G. Coleridge, OBE The Commonwealth Telecommunications Bureau is the Secretariat of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation*. The Bureau was incorporated in Britain on 8th May 1968 by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Act 1968 and from 1st April 1969 it took over from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board the administration of the Commonwealth co-operative telecommunications financial arrangements. The functions of the Bureau are as follows: to collect, maintain and disseminate such financial, traffic and routing data and other information as the Council may determine; to carry out such analyses as the Council may require; to implement agreed financial arrangements and to perform the accounting and clearing house functions of the Organisation; to co-ordinate data collection, operational procedures and network planning exercises; to process material for conferences and meetings of the Council; to maintain and distribute regulations as determined by the Council; and to perform such other duties as the General Secretary may direct. |