It may still have the lion’s share of the market, but Telstra’s rarely a price leader when it comes to landline calls — and now it looks that situation is going to get worse. Mitchell Bingemann at Australian IT reports that there’s been outcry over Telstra’s plans to switch to charging in 30-second blocks, rather than by the second, for long-distance calls. The change comes in from March 31, so now might be a good time to think about switching providers (or hitting up Telstra for a better deal). If you want to get rid of your landline altogether, check our guide to issues when switching to naked DSL. Picture from Wikimedia Commons
to_whom
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 8:36 PMTo add insult to injury, Telstra is also removing the STD pips when STD calls are first answered. The original idea of the STD-pips, on answer, was to alert the caller that the call was a timed – ie STD – call. But _more_ importantly call charging did not start until the end of the pips so that the caller had time to hangup. So Telstra instantly boosts its income on every call