MY PROBLEM
Due to our (my girlfriend and I) time difference and busy-ness, I rarely have a chance to call my girlfriend often, and therefore I have this massive 200 free minutes of MyTime at the moment (accumulated over a few months). Wouldn’t it be great if you can use these free minutes to call other non-Optus mobile numbers as well? Well I’ve just got the idea this morning and did a successful experiment ^^ . Read on.
Okay, so there are these 2 hints:
- PennyTel gives me my own landline number and a call forwarding service.
- OPTUS gives me a lot of free minutes to a landline number.
Have you found out what I’m trying to say next? 
Set your landline number that you get from PennyTel (or from any of VOIP provider you are using) as one of your nominated MyTime number.
Whenever you are going to call a friend’s mobile, set a call forwarding at that VOIP landline number to the mobile number you are going to call.
Voila! Free MyTime minutes deducted instead of a mobile call charge ^^ and you only have to pay your VOIP rate (which should be much cheaper than Optus’ rate or even FREE, depends on your VOIP plan and features)
I just did a 36-sec test call to a friend of mine using this trick, and the cost was:
From OPTUS: FREE minute deducted from my MyTime free minutes
From PennyTEL: $0.28880 (around 29 cents). This is because PennyTel has an offer until January 2008, that charges only 28.8c per call to any Australian mobile.
The usual rate is $0.13 a minute, which is still a huge money saver!
If you are calling with Optus’ rate:
$0.29c (flagfall)+ (2 x $0.39 per 30 seconds) = $1.07 !
Feel free to give comments below and share your savings story! Hope this post is useful to you (and I hope that this is not breaching any of the terms and conditions of Optus/PennyTel, which I’m sure it doesn’t!)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Michael, I’m currently in Singapore, but am going to be in Perth for the next 1 year. I’m in sorta the same situation (girlfriend overseas and all) and i was glad to find your idea online. Just a few questions about Pennytel…how exactly does it work (the sms and the DID number portion) and how reliable is the voice calls?
Would be great if you could reply me on my email.
Thank you so much
Alas, I’m no longer with my girlfriend
I’ve sent an email to you to discuss this further though. Must have been hard for you to leave your girlfriend for a year! All the best to both of you and stay strong!