If you haven't encountered telecommunications in Australia before you should be aware of what is called "Preselection." In Australia you are allowed to preselect a telephone company for any or all of local, national and international, and calls to mobiles (although Telstra remains responsible for the maintenance of the line.) If you want someone other than Telstra to carry your calls you contact your chosen telecoms company and open an account over the telephone or via the internet. After about a fortnight of having given instructions all of your calls to, say, the UK, should automatically be routed via your choice of carrier. In the meantime you will be able to make calls using your chosen telecoms company by keying a four-digit prefix before dialling the number you want to call.

It is worthwhile checking the rates on offer from several companies, particularly if you expect to make a lot of national or international calls - rates are shown on the websites of almost all the companies, and can be surprisingly cheap ($2.50 for a half hour call to the UK, for example). Click here to investigate this more fully.

Also, local calls in Australia are generally charged at around 16 to 22 cents, irrespective of the length of the call. This is a significant difference compared to the UK, particularly if your Internet Service Provider ("ISP") has a local point of presence - in Australia it is possible to stay online for several hours for a fixed cost of the equivalent of only a few pence. Fantastic!

Given this, it is almost essential to make sure that your ISP does indeed have a local telephone number for internet dial up access. A valuable resource in this regard is Cynosure. Be prepared for a long list though - and we take no responsibility for the reliability of some of the small operators!

Also, many ISP's have plans that impose a limit on the number of hours you can spend online or the volume of information you can download - if you exceed these limits the additional costs can soon be significant. Try to make a sensible estimate of the time you expect to be online, and the volume of material you will download - and then increase it because of the (cheap) fixed cost of staying online.

Finally, note that many companies will discount some of their costs if you take more than one service from them (ie preselection and internet access).

Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia