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Pay Phones Going Free


BECZ

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I think they said from tomorrow.

 

(Geez.... the lady next door who steals our mail and catalogues is going to think she owns the one over the road)

Edited by BECZ
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LemonMyrtle

That’s great news…. But… why?

Telstra don’t do anything for anyone without a profit involved. Is this linked to them using their phone booths as billboards without council permission? Is the government paying for it? What’s really going on? 
maybe collecting the coins takes more effort and cost than it’s worth, but they could always make them coin free, (in fact I thought they had already done that)

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Here is another explaining Telsta’s supposed reasons

https://www.9news.com.au/national/telstra-payphones-now-free-to-use-to-help-people-in-crisis-situations-natural-disasters-domestic-violence-coronavirus-pandemic/a75e9ade-a9da-41df-987f-838e7b8c52a2

I do wonder though, how are the vulnerable going to know that they are now free.  Perhaps Telstra need to put advertising on the sides stating that they are now free to use.

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also where are the phone boxes? i used to use them so often as a kid to call my mum to pick me up. i should find our local one and tell the kids in emergencies to go use the payphone...

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LemonMyrtle
2 minutes ago, Elfie34 said:

also where are the phone boxes? i used to use them so often as a kid to call my mum to pick me up. i should find our local one and tell the kids in emergencies to go use the payphone...

They’re not usually a box on a street corner anymore. They’re little things on a pole, or on the wall in a shopping centre or train station. Very hard to find these days.

I used them a lot too to get picked up from the station. 40cents a call. 

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It's a great idea.

We do need to acknowledge the fact that not everyone is always going to have access to a mobile phone or money.

 I doubt that the amount of revenue they have been bringing in for a couple of decades will be missed and I presume the upkeep of a few random pay phones will not put a dent in their profits.

👍

 

Edited by STBG 2
left out a word .
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3 minutes ago, STBG 2 said:

It's a great idea.

We do need to acknowledge the fact that not everyone is always going to have access to a mobile phone or money.

 I doubt that the amount of revenue they have been bringing in for a couple of decades will be missed and I presume the upkeep of a few random pay phones will put a dent in their profits.

👍

 

I agree.  A significant factor in making the phone boxes free is the fact that they didn't make any profit from them anyway. 

Each public phone had a phone number (not publicly displayed in the phone box) but if you had a way of finding out that number then you could make a call to a public phone. Somehow Nanna managed to find out the number for the phone box near where she lived and each week at a pre arranged time she would go down to the phone box and Mum would call it. Nanna didn't have a home phone or "have the phone on" as we called it in those days. 

When I first moved to Sydney I couldn't be bothered paying the $100 deposit to get a home phone with STD access but it didn't bother me in the slightest, I just phoned Nanna at her phone box from the phone box out the front of my block of flats. Seemed absurd now but back then I thought it worked a treat 😆

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ClaudiaCosette

I was still using phone phoxes well into the 2000s, because although at some stage I did get a mobile phone, the 50c public phone box was cheaper than making a mobile call (and I was on a very tight budget as a uni student). I made plenty of phone calls home asking to be picked up after late night classes.

 

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Seayork2002

I remember my uncle telling me he had to go to the exchange place to book an international call back in the 70's or 80's

My brother and I made bit collecting coins from payphones as a kid

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54 minutes ago, Lurker said:

I feel like phone boxes were still big in the 90's! 

I think you are right. In the mid 90s we got called by assorted children from them quite often to come and rescue them. I don't think any of ours had mobiles until the late 90s or early 20s.

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1 hour ago, Lurker said:

I feel like phone boxes were still big in the 90's! 

The man from Telstra in WA that I just heard on the radio discussing this said that the 90s was the peak for phone boxes.

 

I think this is a great move. From what he said, if I heard him right, there were something like 11 million calls made from phone boxes last year, and a lot of them were to emergency services and services like LifeLine. . 

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Another 'back in the day' story.

I know this is terrible but I never paid for calls from a phone box when I was a teenager in the 80s. My friend and I used to tap the phone to get free calls. Used to get told off by the staff when we did it on the phone box outside the post office 🤦‍♀️. Pretty sure it was less than 10 cents for a local call too. 

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53 minutes ago, Ker said:

I didn't even think there were any pay phones around anymore. I haven't seen them in years.

I would probably feel the same if I didn’t have one directly across the road from us!

I hadn’t seen one out on the street for years before we moved here.  The only ones I had seen were the ones in shopping centres as they were often positioned outside the entry to the parents rooms.

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1 hour ago, Lou-bags said:

The man from Telstra in WA that I just heard on the radio discussing this said that the 90s was the peak for phone boxes.

 

I think this is a great move. From what he said, if I heard him right, there were something like 11 million calls made from phone boxes last year, and a lot of them were to emergency services and services like LifeLine. . 

It's the only way to call without being traced. It's actually important for that to be possible. 

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1 hour ago, Mrs Twit said:

Another 'back in the day' story.

I know this is terrible but I never paid for calls from a phone box when I was a teenager in the 80s. My friend and I used to tap the phone to get free calls. Used to get told off by the staff when we did it on the phone box outside the post office 🤦‍♀️. Pretty sure it was less than 10 cents for a local call too. 

We used to swap Irish and British 50 pence pieces on either side of the border. They were identical as far as the phone boxes were concerned. Feel a bit awful now. But that’s teenagers for you.

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