Telecom Assistance To Tsunami Crisis

Friday, 31 December 2004, 10:10 am
Press Release: Telecom New Zealand

Telecom is to credit its customers the cost of calls from home phones to tsunami affected regions in Asia.

The credit will apply to direct dial calls (00 and 0161) made from home phones to land lines and mobile phones in the tsunami-hit regions from Boxing Day through to 4 January.

Many New Zealanders and people visiting the country are making frequent calls to tsunami affected regions in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India and Telecom is taking this step to spare them the extra worry of large phone bills.

Telecommunications services in the affected countries are stressed, with many outages, so customers should be patient when calling the worst affected regions.

The credits will be retrospectively applied to customers’ accounts during January.

As well, Telecom will also waive the normal revenue on 0900 lines raising funds for tsunami appeals. The affected 0900 numbers are Red Cross (0900 31 100) and Caritas (0900 411 11). This means that all the money collected by the appeals will go to the relief effort.

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