the company or the Postmaster-General) at the expense and for the benefit of the Postmaster-General. In the meantime the company agreed to maintain its plant in good and efficient working order, not to show favour or preference among its subscribers, to accept minimum and maximum rates, to allow intercommunication without terminal charges between their and the Post Office subscribers in the same area, and not to collect terminal charges for messages sent over the trunk lines between subscribers of the company and those of the Post Office. The Postmaster-General agreed to extend to subscribers of the company all such telegraphic and postal facilities as his own subscribers enjoyed, and to undertake underground works for the company elsewhere than in London under the same conditions as in London. An agreement was also reached that similar rates should be charged where the Postmaster-General and the company maintained competing systems. As a result, measured rates were, as a rule, substituted for the old flat rates, much to the indignation of various Chambers of Commerce in the Kingdom. In the case of complaint as to inefficient service, if the charge is held to be proved before a person appointed by the Board of Trade, and if it is not the result of a refusal to grant way-leaves, the Postmaster-General may require the company to remedy conditions in the particular area concerned or may call upon them to sell the inefficient system to him. In the first case if there is no improvement or if the second alternative has been adopted, the Postmaster-General may require immediate sale under the same terms that would have held if it had not taken place until the 31st of December, 1911.[840] [840] _Acc. & P._, 1905, xliv, 16, pp. 3-23; _Rep. Com._, 1905, vii, 271, pp. iii-xi.