Optus Now Charging International Rates For VoIP Calls
Christmas may be a time for giving, but if Optus were Santa Claus, the entire holiday season would suck worse than the Star Wars Christmas Special. This year as a.gift to its ‘yes’ Timeless and capped plan customers, Optus sent a special Christmas Eve SMS message announcing that they would be charging international calling rates for calls made to Australian GSM numbers that diverted to international calls using VoIP. As a backgrounder, there are several services that allow you to call a local Australian mobile number, who then divert your calls over the internet to an overseas location, meaning you can make international calls cheaply from your mobile. As APC points out in their extensive coverage of the issue, the problem with Optus charging International rates for these calls is that they don’t actually carry the call to an overseas destination, and therefore don’t incur any fees – all they do is send the call to an Australian number. In other words, this is greed, pure and simple.
APC also suggests a course of action to people affected by Optus’ move – first, send the network a formal complaint, then contact the ACCC, the Office of Fair Trading or the telecommunications industry ombudsman to make your complaint. If enough people make enough noise, hopefully next Christmas won’t see the same horrible gift sent to Optus customers again.
[APC Mag]
- Next Post: Win A BRAVIA Z Series LCD TV »
- « Previous Post: Cisco Showing Off Streaming Media Boxes, HD Telepresence for Consumers at CES
Comments
Optus you greedy dog, I hope your customers whack you one silly for this stunt.
I assume this “International rates for VoIP calls” list would be manually maintained as I cannot see how it would be possible for Optus to detect where the call goes after reaching the local number.
Change from Optus to another VoIP carrier. I use Engin, and use Optus cable. There is nothing at all stopping you from changing carriers.
I would expect this from Telstra and are in no doubt they will catch this pretty quickly but serious. Optus need to have a look at what they are really achieving in this stunt, and that is to piss its customers off. If 3 (my current provider) starts treating me (its customer) like this then they will soon have a pissed off customer on their hands. Hang on. They don’t allow VOIP on their network. Their “skype” plans is actually a similar stunt to the above. I don’t use Skype so am not affected anyway.
Hay,
Can we get a title change to:
Optus Now Charging International Rates For LOCAL CALLS
Thats what they are doing – no one is making an international call with optus. So if I call a friend roaming overseas will I be charged extra now too?!
K