Payphone calling rates going to the moon...

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Payphone calling rates going to the moon...

cokemaster

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#301909 14-Oct-2022 21:16

I understand that one doesn't seek payphones for the cheap calls... but $7.25 per minute to AU???
Fully appreciate that there are additional costs running the payphone fleet but these are crazy (akin to the payday lender of phones).

To put things in perspective... This is 13x the cost that you'd pay on a home landline... from Jun 2000.

Edit:

Telstra has done the opposite... they've made their payphones free (for national calling). https://exchange.telstra.com.au/why-were-making-payphones-free-for-calls-around-australia/

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k1w1k1d

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#2982741 14-Oct-2022 21:25

So, why is Aussie so expensive compared to other countries, eg UK?

nztim

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#2982748 14-Oct-2022 22:42

Spark need to follow Telstra’s should and make all payphone calling within NZ free

How many young people every Friday/Saturday night lose there mobiles in the pub or they go flat and need to call a a cab or a friend to pick them up.

Good on Telstra for social responsibility, Spark follow their lead.

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Stu1

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#2982749 14-Oct-2022 22:56

nztim: Spark need to follow Telstra’s should and make all payphone calling within NZ free

How many young people every Friday/Saturday night lose there mobiles in the pub or they go flat and need to call a a cab or a friend to pick them up.

Good on Telstra for social responsibility, Spark follow their lead.

That’s a brilliant idea

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#2982758 14-Oct-2022 23:49

nztim: Spark need to follow Telstra’s should and make all payphone calling within NZ free

How many young people every Friday/Saturday night lose there mobiles in the pub or they go flat and need to call a a cab or a friend to pick them up.

Good on Telstra for social responsibility, Spark follow their lead.

Perhaps a levy on other industry participants could pay for it.

kiwiharry

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#2982761 15-Oct-2022 01:17

That is the credit card rate. Still quite a difference though compared to rates for other payment methods. $1.50/min for international calls

Source: https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/landline/payphones/

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Inphinity

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#2982956 15-Oct-2022 13:30

Probably got to go up so the one person a year who uses the payphone covers the cost of it still being there :P

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boosacnoodle

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#2983024 15-Oct-2022 16:41

That’s almost as expensive as dialing a sat phone. Not sure how it could be justified rationally to charge more to AU than UK & Ireland.

nztim

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#2983025 15-Oct-2022 16:46

kiwiharry: That is the credit card rate. Still quite a difference though compared to rates for other payment methods. $1.50/min for international calls

Source: https://www.spark.co.nz/shop/landline/payphones/

You can mount an ONT in a phone booth no problem and connect to the Voice Port

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loceff13

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#2983033 15-Oct-2022 17:43

I would have figured they be using a VOIP solution by now given they turned most of the phone boxes around here into wifi hotspots too. Could easily be a free local service and generate goodwill

cokemaster

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#2983036 15-Oct-2022 17:47

I suspect moving payphones to fixed wireless voice would have been an obvious solution to avoid paying copper input pricing.

I just found those prices (which were the only prices shown in the booth) out of this world. Surely they can’t justify them on credit card fees (I would have expected a one off call fee and/or percentage fee to cover the credit card portion of the calls).

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