How we communicate sure has changed. The wonders of technology make face to face interactions easier - at a safe distance, of course.
We can see each other how we want, whenever we want, and usually for free.
But some of us prefer to stick to the old faithful - the landline.
According to a New Zealand Commerce Commission report, 706,000 households in Aotearoa, New Zealand have a landline. That’s almost 40 per cent of households in the country.
It’s a number which surprised Fair Go, if we're honest.
But that's not the only unexpected discovery we've made. We all know when you call someone in another part of the country you pay extra, but did you know that can also happen when you call within your own city?
People using a landline who live in suburbs on the outskirts of Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, are charged national calling fees, or a toll call charge, when they call other Auckland suburbs, even though they're well inside the Auckland Council boundary.
Suburbs like Helensville where one woman told Fair Go, “My mum's in Henderson and if we call her from a landline, yup, you pay a toll charge.”
Another local recalls, “I remember very clearly my mother saying is it a toll call? Get off the line.”
While another remarks, “We're like on the outskirts but still like Auckland.”
People further south in Pukekohe are facing the same issue.
One local asked, “We have the same lockdown rules here as Auckland so why do we have to have an extra toll?”
While another commented, “I think it’s extremely unfair considering we pay Auckland rates.”
The first long distance calls were controlled by an operator who would literally plug your line’s cable into the relevant jack on their switchboard.
You were paying for the person who connected you, and the distance the call had to travel.
So that cost made sense, but seeing as we’re way beyond that technology now, why are landline users still paying toll calls?
Tech Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) chief executive Craig Young says it’s a historical thing.
“When the network was originally built it cost the phone company quite a significant amount to build networks and then to actually send them and to transit the calls,” he says.
“These days everything's done like a computer, everything is done in 1s and 0s and so it doesn't cost them anymore to send a call from here, from Hibiscus Coast to Pukekoke, then it does from here to Dunedin.”
And he too thinks these charges are outdated.
“The industry itself needs to step away from this whole idea of it being these local calling areas and anything outside that is a toll call, it just doesn't make sense.”
Generally speaking, you pay around $14 a month to have a landline, with toll calls on top of that.
Most of the people Fair Go spoke to were OK with paying for calls outside their home city, just not for the ones in it.
The boundary map for Auckland goes from Wellsford up north right down to Pukekohe in the south. But some suburbs that are within the Auckland Council boundaries are outside telecommunications company Spark’s Auckland pricing map.
Spark spokesperson Cassie Arauzo says exchanges were built where the majority of people lived and it was expensive to go from one to another.
“Districts were built around the exchanges, and each exchange had their own customer base and area code,” she says.
“The phone system we have today is still built around local exchanges and their individual area codes and calling zones.”
It's an issue for Vodafone customers too.
Vodafone spokesperson Nicky Preston says that's because the system is based on an old circuit infrastructure. But change is coming.
"We’re transitioning approximately 10,000 customers still using the plain old telephone system (POTS), which includes legacy analogue voice technology, onto newer and more efficient digital calling services before April 2022.”
But there’s no detail yet on what you might pay on those new calling services.
Meanwhile our third biggest telco, 2degrees, offers two landline products; one that uses broadband and includes free national calling, and the other, which uses a traditional copper line for voice calling and includes free calling to local areas.
But a 2degrees spokesperson says, “Pukekohe is outside of the Auckland free local calling area for our home basic product.”
Fewer of us might feel the need for a landline but for many, they still play an important role.
One Helensvillian noting, “The older people, you know the kaumatua, they don't really know how to work their phones, their mobile phones - the landlines are just what they've known for ages, you know?”
As more and more households ditch the landline and our network technology is updated, is it time to ditch the extra call costs too?
Young says, “It's not an infrastructure question because most of the technology's been changed already or is on the way of being changed.
“It's simply the way the phone companies want to charge you. It’s a billing thing - they want to make some money out of you and so they want to charge you for these calls, and they need to make the change.”
Young’s advice is to shop around if you are unhappy with your current plan.
“There are a number of different plans out there you can get free local and national calling,” he says.
“But the one thing I will say is that it does get complicated and we do know that its complex for consumers to try and figure out what's best for them, but it does pay to take the time and effort to have a look around.”
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