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Information – in the Interest of the Subscribers


by Jan Pedersen

The new tariffs introduced by KTAS on 1st April 1899 made subscribers, politicians, but also the telephone company itself rush into print. In the newspapers subscribers complained; P.A. Alberti brought the matter up for discussion in the Dan-ish Parliament; and KTAS was the first telephone company in Denmark to launch a free magazine to pour oil on troubled waters. The first volume of "The Telephone" appeared already in April 1899.


There is evident coherence between the reactions to the tariff increases and the decision of KTAS to start the edition of "The Telephone". The magazine was sent "to all subscrib-ers free of charge." The purpose of the magazine was similar to the campaigns of our time informing consumers about the products and services they are paying for. On the front page of the first volume KTAS explained that "The Telephone will in particular deal with questions of significance to the intercon-nection between subscribers and the company". It was exactly this interconnection that had been badly aggravated by the new tariffs.

The tariff increases had raised a public debate in which the businessmen of Copenhagen expressed their dissatisfaction by a large number of letters to the newspaper editors. Several members of the Opposition led by P. A. Alberti of the Liberal Reform Party made inquiries to Minister for the Interior V. Bardenfleth as it was the Minister for the Interior who was responsible of fixing the maximum tariffs of the telephone companies since the state monopoly on telephone operation in Denmark according to law of 11th May 1897 on Telegraphs and Telephones.

No More Free Twaddle

The Minister for the Interior had not only increased the tariffs, but at the same time he had changed the tariff system. To the outrage of the large-scale customers the right to free conversations had been limited. In future the telephone bills would partly depend on the consumption of conversations in order to limit the number of luxury conversations over long distances. Luxury conversations were when you called for no particular reason, but perhaps just wanted a chat. Previous-ly, both private and business clients had been able to pay an annual subscription fee giving them the right to free conver-sations in the entire area covered by the telephone company. Suddenly the big companies in Copenhagen had to calculate their conversations with enterprises all over Zealand as an additional cost.

The expectations had been that the state monopoly and the concessions to the telephone companies would mean a saving to the businessmen who formed by far the largest part of the subscribers, but instead additional economic burdens were now imposed upon them. KTAS used "The Telephone" to explain that the tariffs should not only cover the expenses of the operation, but also the large extensions of the telephone network necessitated by the increasing number of subscribers.

Among the subjects dealt with in "The Telephone" certain foreign telephone companies and their tariff systems got conspicuous columnage. Foreign tariffs – that is if they were higher, of course, – were converted into Danish kroner to illustrate that it was actually not expensive to telephone with KTAS. Too low tariffs made it difficult to meet the customers’ expectations to the quality of the lines.

"The Telephone" therefore also presented the many different duties discharged every day by the diligent employees of the company. In the permanent column "Sundry Notes" you could read news about telephony from all over the world. More-over, several pages were used to list the continuous intake of new subscribers at KTAS. The format was so that it could be stuck into the telephone directory as a monthly supple-ment. Last, but not least, the magazine contained many advertisements.

KTAS stopped publishing "The Telephone" already in 1901. The costs in connection with informing all sub-scribers once a month were too high, but the interests of the 13,148 sub-scribers had been placed on the agenda. The dissatisfaction among the subscribers led among other things to the establishment of a committee of Copenhagen telephone subscribers on 18th July 1899; the first of its kind in Denmark.


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