The Government has always monopolized the long-distance lines, and is now about to buy out all private companies.

There are only fifty-five thousand telephones to thirty-two million people--as many as in Norway and less than in Denmark.

And in many of the southern and Sicilian provinces the jingle of the telephone bell is still an unfamiliar sound.
The main peculiarity in Holland is that there is no national plan, but rather a patchwork, that resembles Joseph's coat of many colors.

Each city engineer has designed his own type of apparatus and had it made to order.

Also, each company is fenced in by law within a six-mile circle, so that Holland is dotted with thumb-nail systems, no two of which are alike.