Phones and International Direct

[jr]

Just been on Norfolk Island for a week. Norfolk has no phone agreements with Telstra or any other phone company and they have their own telephone company and yes Norfolk is part of Australia.

Anyway, while there I had my iPhone on aeroplane mode and my phone only displayed SOS and the resort WiFi signal strength.

I made a 2 minute call to a local number and thought it was using the WiFi to do this as the call went through.

I now have a Telstra bill for $2.82 for International Direct calling. Contacted Telstra to tell me how I can be billed for a call when there was not phone signal showing on my phone.

They suggested the phone may have switch of aeroplane mode but there was no signal anyway. Telstra have refunded the $2.82 but really a needed to know how this can happen.

I expected at the time I was using the WiFi to make the call.

Does anyone know if you can use WiFi to make phone calls from your mobile, very confusing.


JR

[loub]

On my Samsung phones it has wi-fi dialing .Never used it but my missus said that the telstra chap told her to turn that on as where we live the signal isn't flash but if it's turned on you can receive calls though the wifi signal as long as you have an active account. I have never used it.You must have had wifi dialling turned on.

[Old Techo]

JR,

I use WiFi calling to give me phone use when I don't have a phone signal, but can get a phone signal up a pole.   See  acmctf.proboards.com/post/25288/thread

The above link goes to this post... I use 2 smart-phones. One up the pole for signal acquisition purposes but I have now enabled WiFi calling so the second phone can make/answer phone calls via the hotspot WiFi from the elevated phone.

When you use WiFi calling it uses data (VoIP) and normally on your own Internet Service Provider.   So it is not making a phone call in the normal sense. It just gobbles data. In my example above it is using my data on the phone that is up the pole.

In your case, if WiFi calling, you would be using data on the ISP linked to the WiFi signal belongem Norfolk.

[spaceland]

Feb 27, 2023 12:12:51 GMT 10 jr said:

Just been on Norfolk Island for a week. Norfolk has no phone agreements with Telstra or any other phone company and they have their own telephone company and yes Norfolk is part of Australia.

You need to understand the history of NI to understand the lack of mobile communications. When the Pitcaners settled on NI it was a British protectorate. On the 1st of July 1914 the Brits handed it over to the Australians and it became a protectorate of Oz (not part of Oz.) In 1979, Norfolk Island was granted limited self-government by Australia, under which the island elected a government that ran most of the island's affairs. During this time we required a passport to travel to NI. Under their self government they elected not to have a mobile telephone service on the island. (Thee was in fact an attempt to establish a phone base station on the Island. However, there was a shipping accident ant the control gear ended up in the brine before it reached the shore.)

With the introduction of GST in Australia, the import duties were removed from gods being landed in Oz. This meant that tourism to NI with its attraction of duty free goods to Oz was no longer an attraction and tourism declined. This decline in tourism and the trade in duty free goods destroyed the economy of the island and over the years they demanded subsidies from the Oz government. The government resisted this whilst they were not part of Oz and paying taxes and other duties to Oz. This all changed in the last decade. On 17 June 2015, the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly was abolished, with the territory becoming run by an Administrator and an advisory council. Elections for a new Regional Council were held on 28 May 2016, with the new council taking office on 1 July 2016.

From that date, most Australian Commonwealth laws were extended to Norfolk Island. This means that taxation, social security, immigration, customs and health arrangements apply on the same basis as in mainland Australia. Travel between Norfolk Island and mainland Australia became domestic travel on 1 July 2016.

And still there is no mobile phone on the island.

attribution: much of the above comes from Wikipedia.

[jr]

Thanks, Spaceland for the history of NI very interesting. They do now have a 4G sim card but at this stage no data available on the card, but it is on the way. Telstra has no agreement for International usage with NI. Its interesting talking to the locals when in conversation for example they said they must go to Australia to have a baby now, they don’t say we need to go to the mainland to have a baby.

My Resort had WiFi and they just gave you a password to log on, not sure where the WiFi was getting its link to the world but worked OK, probably from a dish. We used lots of data when at the resort, even would stream my radio station back in Newcastle but it was not good enough to stream movies and sometimes no good for anything.

OT, I vagally remember your post on using two phones one as a hot spot. Years ago, I used to use Skype to call other countries and it used the NET.


JR

[spaceland]

Feb 27, 2023 17:08:18 GMT 10 jr said:

If you did not see a dish around the resort, it's a possibility they have ADSL or Xpax as we did before the the NBN started up.