Kiwianarama

Please hold, I have someone on the other line.

You thought the world had stopped using land-line telephones years ago, right? You were wrong.

Like retired English couples, and migratory Godwits – it turns out they all just came to New Zealand to die.

So why, in the 2nd decade of the new millennium, do New Zealanders still talk to each other on such a dated piece of technology? Are we especially susceptible to microwave radiation this close to the South Pole? Or is the New Zealand accent so bad we can’t even understand ourselves without a crystal clear line?

No. The truth is, we never had a choice. Although it’s not for want of trying.

In fact, since the 1980s -those heady days of Gloss and brick-handsets that look like field phones from M.A.S.H – New Zealand has been desperate to go mobile. Desperate to stay technologically apace with the rest of the world. And desperate to be able to reply, “no look, see, we have mobile phones too,” to the boast-deflating statement, “yes, you’ve already told me about Eftpos, like, a hundred times.”

But New Zealand is a victim of it’s own size. With a population that for most of the last 20 years could support 2 or less players in the mobile network market, competition to drive down call prices has been about as serious as a commitment from Millie Elder to stay off P.

And although the situation appears to be marginally improving (there are now 3 mobile networks, after comedian and robot impersonator Rhys Darby started one in 2009), call charges are still so ball-retractingly high, that the typical mobile phone conversation in New Zealand goes something like this;

(ring ring, click) ”G’day.. yep… yep… ok, shut up… Bye.” (click, dial tone)

Which means that the only way to have a meaningful conversation in New Zealand, still, is to use a landline. Or possibly a fax machine.

Fortunately, for those Kiwis who clung on for a reason to own a cellphone, text-messaging, introduced in the late 1990s,  presented an affordable option that, unlike a owning a pager, wouldn’t get you beaten up for being a tool. However this lead to an unusual sort of feedback loop in the marketing of mobile phone plans. Vodafone and Telecom, noticing the popularity of text messaging, took this to mean that Kiwis must be just ‘mad for texting’ (not that the outrageous call charges simply left them no other choice) and started building impossibly high text allowances into their monthly plans.

Even today, consumers are faced with a choice, for around $30 a month on the major networks, between either 20 minutes of inclusive call minutes, or something like 6000 free text messages. And while you could quite comfortably blow the call allowance everyday just waiting for the phone to pick up,  even a 13 yo girl with 3 thumbs and a new boyfriend couldn’t get through 6000 texts a month.

So until such time as New Zealanders get the sort of unlimited mobile call plans on offer to the rest of the world, don’t be alarmed if you hear an unusual sound coming from the hall of many New Zealand homes. A sound that may be eerily familiar to you, as that classic mobile ringtone ‘Old Telephone’.

Chances are it is, in fact, an actual old telephone.