[Gllug] OT Internet connection

[Pete Ryland]

On 14/03/07, John Winters <john at sinodun.org.uk> wrote:
> This reminds me of a wonderful design mis-feature which I came across in
> Australia in the 80s.
>
> Payphones there were usually inside (rather than kiosks in the street)
> and the standard unit was a heavy red plastic one, with a coin slot.
> Local calls were all a fixed price (60c if I remember correctly) and
> clearly the design brief for the phone had specified that emergency
> calls had to be free.

This doesn't sound like Australia.  The public phones in the 80s were
greenish metal, and all outside in tardises with awkward folding
doors.  They could certainly dial without a coin, in fact you could
ring any number without a coin and it connected for about 3 seconds.
Useful for prompting for a lift home from school.  In fact, if you
dialled a '1' every 3 seconds, it wouldn't disconnect - these were dec
dialling, not dtmf, so '1' was the shortest to dial.  For
international calls, you needed to dial a '0' every now and then too.
Not that I ever did things like this when I was young of course.

Also, the price has *never* been as high as 60c.  Indeed, local (same
city) calls are fixed price, but were 20-30c in the 80s.
Neighbourhood calls (same exchange) are now free from what I gather.

Year Price change
1963 Price increased from 5d to 6d
1975 Price increased from 5c to 10c
1982 Price increased from 10c to 20c
1986 Price increased from 20c to 30c
1994 Price increased from 30c to 40c
2000 GST impact meant effective price reduction to 36c

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=670030&nodeId=f98d1a6e8d89254f5cf0111be1e06b39&fn=Telstra.pdf

Some corner stores (kind of equivalent to off licenses without
alcohol) and similar premises had blue plastic phones which were not
provided by Telecom/Telstra, and were more to save them from letting
customers use their normal phone.  I don't think these all behaved in
the same way, but some indeed may not have honoured the AS requirement
for dialling emergency numbers without charge.

Pete
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