Mr. Forbes, the chairman of the National Telephone Company, said to the Committee of 1892: "I am prepared to concede that the telephone company which conducts about 93 or 94 per cent of the whole telephonic business of the country conducts a great deal of it monstrously badly, but it is not their fault, it is the fault of Parliament"; and again in referring to the lack of way-leave power: "Take London for instance; London is very badly served, but why is it very badly served? Because everything depends upon the caprice of the individual." As a result of the complaints that the telephone system was giving an inadequate service because of the high rates on an inflated capital, because the utility of the telephones was impaired in that they could not be used in connection with the telegraph and postal services, and because of the lack of powers to erect poles in the streets or to lay underground wires or to connect their exchanges by trunk lines, the Government announced a change of policy in 1892.[829] This change was set forth in a Treasury Minute of the 23d of May, 1892, and in two memoranda of agreement of the same year to which the National and the New Companies were respectively parties, the arrangements being sanctioned by Parliament in the Telegraph acts of 1892 and 1896. So far as it affected the National Company the arrangement was embodied in detail in an agreement dated the 25th of March, 1896, no similar agreement being made with the New Company because that company went into liquidation in 1892, and in 1896 surrendered its licence. By the agreement of 1896 the National Telephone Company surrendered its previous licence except for certain definite districts called "Exchange Areas," a large number of which were specified in the agreement. These areas were as a rule coterminous with the urban districts, but comprised in addition certain areas made up of two or more urban districts together with the intervening country. Power was reserved to the Postmaster-General to specify other exchange areas, the understanding being, both with regard to areas already specified and those to be specified, that industrial areas of wide extent should be recognized in cases where there were no considerable towns forming centres of business, that neighbouring towns intimately connected in their business relations should be placed in the same area, and that small towns and villages should also be so grouped when each by itself would not pay. Outside these areas the Postmaster-General alone was entitled to carry on telephone business, no more licences being granted for the whole Kingdom, and for any particular town only with the approval of the corporation or municipal authority. Call offices for the use of the public were to be opened at the company's exchanges and connected with the post offices in order that exchange subscribers might telephone over the trunk lines to exchange subscribers in other towns.