If you can still find a local payphone, you can use it to call Santa, as Telstra switches on the service for the yearly event.
It’s that time of year again; time for kids to finish school, for parents to brace for kids finishing school, and for shopping centres to brace for the influx of parents looking for presents and kids looking for Santa, not to mention the teens in between who don’t believe.
A few weeks ago, Telstra once again turned its payphone and phone box network into a Santa call-out service, shifting the number #464646 into a phone call for Santa effectively on demand, because on an old keypad, it translates to “HOHOHO”. It’s a continuation of a long almost-tradition Telstra has been running since 2021, which turns phone boxes into Santa calling station for a good month or so before Christmas.
Just as with previous years, the Telstra Santa connection is free to use, partly because all phone booths have been free since 2021. However, Telstra has also brought in a few kid-sized phone booths, as well, running them in select Telstra stores in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney until Christmas Eve.
The night before Christmas is when the Telstra Santa connection stops, giving kids and parents a little over a week to talk to the man in red from any place in Australia, something that people still did even when the service went offline. Telstra notes that in the time the service wasn’t running, almost 100,000 public phone calls came through to the out-of-office.
Across Australia, Telstra has found around 60 percent of the calls come from beaches and waterfront locations, with a further 25 percent from city centres, likely around places where there are shops. Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne clocks up the most calls, with over 10,000 in the past five years.
The service is back up again, though, so if you happen to be near a phone booth, kids and parents alike (anyone, really) can make the call, and it won’t even cost a thing.
Alternatively, if you don’t find yourself within reach of a Telstra phone box and still need to reach out to Santa, consider an app, because there’s at least one decent Santa video call app out there, as well.
