Post Office Booked Out

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30941, 23 December 1965, Page 3

Post Office Booked Out

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Dec. 22. One of the country’s biggest money ea ers this Christmas will be the New Zealand Post Office. It is booked out for overseas telephone calls at about £1 a minute.

Calls to Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States were “pretty well booked out” for Christmas and Boxing Day, a Post Office spokesman said tonight. It would be impossible now to put in a social call to Britain; the circuits had been booked out a fortnight ago.

However, some periods were kept for urgent calls, he said. The spokesman said the popular periods for calls to Australia, Canada and the United States were now booked out. It was possible to put some calls through, but the callers would not be able to select their own times. . Overseas calls were booked “pretty well around the clock.” Most popular were those which would go through in the daytime for the recipient. “People here will sit

up all hours to put a call in to home in the daytime,” the spokesman said.

The New Year period was less popular for overseas social calls, but it was still busy for the Post Office. To Australia the minimum charge is 30s for three minutes and 10s a minute thereafter. To Britain calls cost £3 for the first three minutes, and £1 a minute thereafter. The first three minutes of a call to the United States cost £4 6s Od, and to Canada £3 2s Od.