Our corporate mobile plan in AP was updated a few weeks ago so that all mobile calls between any phone on the plan is now free. Previously, we were paying upwards of 30 cents/minute for these calls.
Today, I was working remotely, and spent about 3 hours on the phone - all for free. Last month that would have cost me $80 in call charges.
I thought this was interesting in light of the new VoIP offerings that are now available in their many forms, including the internal ASI system and well known public systems like Skype. Is this a response from the large telco's to make sure we continue to use their services? Our telco is Telstra - the largest in Australia - and I believe they are also making similar moves for home phones so that you get unlimited calls for a fixed monthly fee.
There is certainly a lot of money at stake. For AP, it will save us over $5k/year in call costs. Great news for consumers.
Tell me about it
I've just found out the reality of phone charges. With Jules now at home she spend her day on the phone it seems. For calls from land line to mobile the charges are uncapped at more than 50c per minute and from her mobile to another service provider can be almost $1.