History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

Cable Services
by Bill Glover

When the1866 Atlantic and the recovered 1865 cable were opened for business, rates between London and New York were set at a minimum charge of £20 for a message of up to 20 words, with each word being an average of five letters. Additional words were charged at £1. Within three years this had been reduced to £3 7s 6d for a 10 word message, with a similar reduction for additional words. In 1872 a flat word rate was brought in and this was gradually reduced until 1884 when it was 1s 8d per word.

This was to be the pattern throughout the cable networks as they spread worldwide. Where competition existed, prices were low, but without competition rates remained high. The only other services offered at this time were urgent telegrams at double the full rate, and press telegrams.

In 1884 the Commercial Cable Company, set up by John W. Mackay and Gordon Bennett in 1883, had the first of six cables laid across the Atlantic to compete with the Anglo American Telegraph Company. This resulted in the rate being reduced to1s 0d and then a price war brought it down to 6d. Shortly after it went back up to1s 0d. The final reduction, to 9d, came in 1923 because of competition from wireless.

A similar situation to that across the Atlantic existed within the network serving the British Empire. In 1890 rates from the United Kingdom were: to Australia 9s 6d, New Zealand 10s 6d, South Africa 8s 11d, Gold Coast 8s 0d, British Guiana 14s 1d and the West Indies 11s 11d. Calls were made for the cable companies to be nationalised to help bring down costs. In the end the various Dominion governments set up a committee to come up with ideas on what to do.

The first suggestion was for a Deferred Telegram which would be at half full rates. It took almost ten years to get the agreement of the various cable companies and the members of the International Telegraph Union, but during 1911-12 the service was gradually introduced. The conditions laid down for this type of telegram were: A minimum of five words must be paid for, they must be in plain language and in the language of the country of origin or destination or of a language specified by the relevant telegraph company. Deferred telegrams can be identified by the prefix, = LC = at the start of the message.

Variations on the prefix were:-

= LCO = Deferred Telegram in Plain English
= LCF = Deferred Telegram in Plain French
= LCD = Deferred Telegram in any other language agreed by the Telegraph Company.

These would only apply to the UK or English speaking countries. If the telegram originated in France then = LCO = would be a deferred telegram in French, or German if originating in Germany, etc.

LETTER TELEGRAM

Soon after the deferred telegram had been introduced the cable companies added a second reduced rate service, the Letter Telegram. This was charged at between one quarter and one third ordinary rates with the following conditions. A minimum of 20 or 25 words must be paid for and in plain language. The 25 word minimum only applied to Canada and USA. The prefix for these messages was = LT = or sometimes = DLT = or = NLT = indicating a day or night letter telegram.

EMPIRE SOCIAL TELEGRAM

A variation on the Letter Telegram was the Empire Social Telegram for use within the then British Empire and identified by the prefix = GLT =. This was a flat rate 12 words for 5s-0d service introduced on 1 May 1939. Messages could be sent free of charge on the first day.

See this 1951 GPO poster promoting the special rate: "Say It By Cable".

EUROPEAN LETTER TELEGRAM

Another variation was the European Letter Telegram which was limited to the continent of Europe including the United Kingdom, the prefix being = ELT =.

WEEKEND LETTER TELEGRAM

The third reduced rate service was the Weekend Letter Telegram at rates slightly below those of the Letter Telegram also with a minimum of 20 or 25 words paid for and in plain language. This telegram would only be delivered (posted) on the Monday following the day it was handed in. Prefix for this was = WLT =.

GREETINGS TELEGRAM

The Greetings Telegram was aimed at the Christmas and New Year period and provided a system of standard messages or a plain language message of a minimum of 10 words at varying rates depending on the destination. Special telegram and message forms were provided. The prefix for this service was = XLT =.

EXPEDITIONARY FORCE MESSAGE

One other special rate service was the Expeditionary Force Message (EFM) for the use of members of the Armed Forces and civilians serving overseas, during wartime, as well as their families in both world wars. In the first world war, it was introduced in 1914, the rate was one quarter of the ordinary rate and in the second world war 2s-6d for a minimum of 12 words, with the service starting early in 1940. A list of messages with code numbers was provided and the sender could select three appropriate messages with just the code numbers being transmitted. The prefix for this service was = EFM =.

These reduced rate services were a great success and brought a considerable amount of new business to the cable companies. On many routes the number of messages exceeded the normal traffic. None of these special rate services would be transmitted until all ordinary messages had been cleared and they were normally posted on to the addressee rather than being delivered by messenger.

Research Material Needed

The Atlantic Cable website is non-commercial, and its mission is to make available on line as much information as possible.

You can help - if you have cable material, old or new, please contact me. Cable samples, instruments, documents, brochures, souvenir books, photographs, family stories, all are valuable to researchers and historians.

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