What’s good on the NBN 3
First of all, we have discussed in the original post the benefit of number portability and in the next one, we looked at Faxing on the NBN and now with what’s good on the NBN3. Telephone call pricing.
Telephone call pricing
Gee, it was not that many years ago that a local telephone call was $0.20 and a National call about $0.15 minute. Then we had Mobile calls with a $0.50 flag fall and the same per minute. Very expensive. Oops, I forgot the line charge at $32.00 a month.
Now don’t get me wrong here what I want you to do is have a look at your phone bill and see how close you get to these amounts.
For every line probably an $80 to $100 line and call charges and more if you call international destinations.
When I started in this business a one minute call to the USA or UK would cost one dollar a minute and that was our offered super discount price. The same call today is around $0.02 a minute.
Now competition created this dramatic discount using a variety of world carriers but often with disastrous voice quality.
While we added services like Skype using VOIP networks and gradually the mobile carriers also came to the party reducing many prices.
The Telstra monopoly
At the same time, Telstra with a monopoly on telephone lines maintained line fees and local calls at a steady rate of INCREASE.
As a by the way but important to understand was in pre-NBN days your telephone line also carried data by splitting the line into two services both quite separate in that neither interfered with the other. The internet was slow but the voice traffic remained consistent.
Now. post-NBN the rules have changed. Your Internet service now carries your voice traffic and is the hero product at your location. That is that your voice quality will be compromised by congestion.
This may not be a problem with a reasonable NBN speed and low voice traffic. I mean here probably 2-3 simultaneous calls plus data. This is an essential element in your planning.
New call fees on NBN
Now connection to the NBN by SIP or internet providers for your telephone calls is priced to be competitive.
Local and National calls around $0.10 each and CTM at $0.18 minute. Extra lines at $11.00 a month
Furthermore, just like your mobile phone plans, the NBN carriers have capped monthly plans that include all calls. This can be as low as $34.95 a month for the two lines including all but International calls. Three lines and all calls for just over a hundred buck s a month has got to be a saving. BTW International call to the top 25 countries is at just cents per minute.
In conclusion and to cover the most important issues.
Voice is now shared with data so plan carefully to avoid problems.
Think bundled calls and save money.
Choose a reliable carrier
Seek reliable information and advise
Peter Hanley
