Hong Kong’s telephone system, before smartphones – from the 1920s to the 70s

Recently, a long-forgotten rectangle of thick, cream-coloured card slipped out from between the pages of an equally long-ignored file – a solitary survivor from a batch of carte de visite printed in about 1989.

Like any long-ago document viewed decades later, this discovery piqued some historical interest; in particular, the numerical code for the New Territories – zero, followed by the telephone number – immediately stood out, and brought back memories of those first years in Hong Kong, when so many small-but-important details of daily life had to be swiftly assimilated and remembered. Knowing which prefix to call was important. Call from the wrong place, without the right prefix, and what seemed like the correct number would be swiftly met with an uncomprehending “Wai? Wai?”, followed by a terse “Dap chor!” – wrong number – and a dead line buzzing in one’s ear.

Back then, 0 was the prefix for the New Territories; 5 for Hong Kong Island; 3 for Kowloon, and 9 for the outlying islands – everywhere from Lantau and Lamma to Cheung Chau and Chek Lap Kok used it. Through the prefix, one immediately knew where someone lived in general terms. In time, the next few numerals tended to narrow the location within which the phone number was found; 474 and 476 were Kam Tin and Yuen Long, 656 suggested Tai Po Kau, 812 was The Peak, 982 indicated Lamma, and so on. While not infallible, numbers nevertheless gave a useful geographical indicator.

Until 1925, Hong Kong’s telephone system was operated by the London-based Oriental Telephone Company and calls had to be made through a manual exchange. Callers first spoke to an operator and were then put through, via a switchboard, to the required number. In some instances, an individual address – 517 The Peak or 14 Shek O – was used instead of Kowloon 69847, or whatever a particular telephone number may have been.

From 1925, the Hong Kong Telephone Company was granted a government franchise in return for laying underground telephone cables to replace existing above-ground wires. Substantially completed within a few years, automatic exchanges were introduced in 1930 on both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. By 1932, two small automatic exchanges were in operation at Fanling and Tai Po Market – a small but telling indicator of commercial and residential demand in the pre-war New Territories.

Long-distance communications also dramatically improved; from 1931, a 24-hour trunk-line system was in operation to Canton, radio-telephone services to Shanghai started in 1934, followed by other major mainland cities in the following years. Booked and scheduled through the telephone exchange, these “outstation” calls were correspondingly expensive. Long-distance radio-telephone calls also experienced several seconds’ delay between intermediate radio-repeater masts, which meant that the general thread of a conversation could be patchy. Much time – and money – could be wasted on “What did you say?”, “Repeat that again, please?” and sometimes the last few sentences simply disappeared into the ether, never to re-emerge at the other end of the line.