Feel like the kids need to connect with the man in red? Telstra’s yearly Santa hotline has switched on once again, available by calling the equivalent of “ho ho ho”.
Payphones and phone boxes don’t have much use anymore now that most of us have mobile phones, but if your phone is out of charge or credit, they can be helpful. Telstra’s payphone and phone box network has been free for a number of years now, and also work as a Telstra Air WiFi hotspot, too.
Those are the main purposes of the 14,000 phone boxes the telco has left around the country, but there’s also one other use that kicks in right around this time of the year: calls to Santa.
While you can clearly see Santa at shopping centres across the country from now until the big day in December, and you can also talk to Santa using an app, Telstra has long ran a free calls to Santa program from its payphones, and is doing it again in 2025.
Last year, over half a million calls to Santa were made from Telstra phone boxes, and this year, the service kicks in again, working on any payphone by dialing “#HO HO HO” — which translates to #46 46 46 — which will connect the caller to Santa from a payphone, but not a mobile phone.
To make things more fun this year, Telstra will have mini payphones at select Telstra stores in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane until Christmas Eve, which will function just like the real ones made for adults, but just happen to be smaller and made for kids.
A selection of those 14,000 payphones across Australia will also be dressed up to look as though an elf or two paid a friendly visit, spreading a little bit of extra Christmasy cheer.
