One of the things that really sucks about living in Brighton is that we pay long distance rates for all of our local calls outside of the immediate area. It makes for humugous phone bills.

So here’s a thought”

Why not ditch the landline altogether? We have access to cable internet so most of us can survive without it (unless you need a fax”)

Here’s how it could work:

Buy 4 Telstra mobiles on a $20.00 contract and with each mobile choose the ‘my hour’ option which will give one hour per day of free calls up to 20 minutes in length (to any phone anywhere in Aus). That means there will be four hours of the day when all calls will be free.

If the bulk of phone calls can be made in the free time then the $10.00 of included calls per contract can be used for those emergencies outside of those times.

Use one phone as your primary number for incoming calls and the others for outgoing only.

Currently our landline with AAPT is around $130.00/month and we have two mobiles, one on a $30.00 plan and one on a $20.00 plan. It makes me mad that we pay $180.00/mth just for phone calls!!

But” if we ditch the landline and this system works then we could reduce that by $100.00/mth or $1200.00/year.

Even with 5 or 6 Telstra mobiles (sounding silly doesn’t it) its still a lot cheaper. Of course it’d be a mess with 6 phones sitting around and you’d need to remember which one was for which hour – but it could be a way to beat this ridiculous system.

I know some people have been thinking about it, but the question is ‘Can we do it? Will we regret it?’

The only thing that holds me back is the fact that my friends would have to pay mobile rates every time they called me.

I’m such a thoughtful guy 🙂 (sigh)