Telstra reveals plans to turn all public payphones into free Wi-Fi hotspots across Australia

One year after making calls free from all public phones, Telstra will open Wi-Fi from phone booths to everyone. See how it will work.

Australia will be covered by a network of 15,000 free wireless internet hotspots as part of a new plan to modernise the country’s payphone network.

One year after making calls free from all public phones, Telstra will open Wi-Fi from phone booths to anyone who wants to use it, rather than just Telstra customers.

And the company said that would include more than 1000 payphones in “disaster-prone” regional areas, where the internet access from a payphone could be used in emergency situations.

Telstra consumer group executive Michael Ackland said the decision to turn all public phone boxes into Wi-Fi hotspots had been made to support vulnerable Australians.

“While a lot of us take connectivity for granted these days, many isolated or vulnerable people, although they may have access to a mobile device, don’t always have the data to be able to connect,” Mr Ackland said.

Public payphone calls were made free from August 2021. Ethan Carey, aged 11, at a public phone. Picture: Wayne Taylor

“Free Wi-Fi has the potential to make a massive difference in their ability to stay connected to family and friends and access essential services.”

About 3000 Telstra payphones would deliver free internet access to anyone who connected to it from Thursday, he said, with “the goal of upgrading our entire payphone network of almost 12,000 payphone over the coming years”.

The free internet service could also be used in natural disasters, with more than 1000 located in high-risk areas within regional Australia.

The company previously added Telstra Air Wi-Fi to phone boxes in 2015, in a service that was only available to Telstra customers who signed up to it.

A Telstra spokesman said the free network would not collect any more information about users than details required by law, and recommended users did not do internet banking or send “sensitive materials” over the network as it was open and not encrypted.

A survey by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network found 62 per cent of people on low incomes wanted access to free public Wi-Fi, but 31 per cent did not know where to find it.

Telstra’s move also comes one year after the company made voice calls free on its payphone network across Australia, causing a 70 per cent rise in phone calls.

More than 250,000 of those phone calls were made to emergency services, including triple-zero and Lifeline, while Centrelink became the most dialled service.

Originally published as Telstra reveals plans to turn all public payphones into free Wi-Fi hotspots across Australia