Expat news roundup

Surprisingly there's a suggestion of price fixing by the incumbent Telcos. Who'd have thought it?

A FEW expat and immigrant related news items for you today.

The Telegraph has run a story about returning your children to school in Britain after schooling in a foreign country. It's always worrying to move children from one shool to another let alone one country to another.

It is easier for local authorities to accept applications from overseas when schools are not over-subscribed and there is a good local choice, less easy when local parents are going to extraordinary lengths to secure the best schools.

A reason phone calls are so expensive in NZ is investigated in the Otago Daily Times today. Surprisingly there's a suggestion of price fixing by the incumbent Telcos. Who'd have thought it?

Critics claim the rates agreed by Telecom and Vodafone are among the highest in the world.

And in a sign that the recession is still deepening in NZ, the ODT also carries a story about the number of house respossessions across the country.

Every month, the line of the graph just keeps climbing. The fact that four percent of house sales are now mortgagee sales shows just how much the real estate market has changed and how Kiwis are being hit hard by the recession.

The ASB economic note this week, covering the previous quarter, says, Q1 GDP contracted by 1.0%, "weaker than expected," and the previous quarter was also revised down. There were also large declines in manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling, transport and communications.

Comments

[Alan]

In terms of phone call charges, I think the whole system is out of whack.
Local calls (in the dialling code area) are free - but someone has to pay for the infrastructure and capacity somewhere - so we all pay higher line rental charges to cover that. I'd rather pay for a local call based on my usage, than have a higher rental.

No surprise that when stuff is free people use it a lot, however there's a huge different when you have to 'pay a little something'. I've seen this lots with how long people talk when they've rung you via an 0800 freephone number or an 0845 local rate number (only applies in the UK really).
Mobile termination rates are really high, and it's a scarcity mentality that the two mobile providers have had, instead of thinking that if they lowered prices a bit, people would use their mobiles more - hence more revenue for them both. But no, keep prices high 'cos they want us on their network, not the other.

I find international calls quite cheap - on the bundled packages you only pay $5 (NZD) for a two hour talk to the UK. Or $40 per month to call the UK as much as you like as long as any one call isn't longer than two hours. Bargain really.