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Opinion
Free international calls via the internet and live video links to space are a far cry from what we used to tolerate phoning other countries
- Once upon a time, the cost of an international telephone call could cut short even the most emotional conversation
- Cheeky callers devised ways of scamming the system, giving names to operators that were really coded messages
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A newspaper journalist for many years, Sian Powell has lived and worked in Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Hong Kong, covering everything from presidential elections to polio outbreaks.
Forking over a handful of cash to make an international telephone call used to happen all the time. People would call from their home phones and within a few weeks a phone bill would arrive in the post with calls neatly itemised and added into frightening totals. Travellers abroad rang home on hotel phones, public phones or from ancient phone shops with glass cubicles.
These days it almost seems easier for Chinese President Xi Jinping to chat via video link with three weightless astronauts on China’s first space station, Tiangong, than it once was to ring a friend or relative in another country. Now there’s no need to keep half a mind on the cost of a call, even one into space.
Once upon a time, the cost of an international telephone call could cut short even the most emotional conversation, but cheeky callers had ways of scamming the system.
Before the age of mobile phones, travellers could ring home with a collect call, sometimes called a “reverse charge” call, or via a “person-to-person” call.
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