In a world that seems increasingly keen to monetise every interaction we have with it, how nice it was to watch my daughter discover she could make a “call to Santa” from a public payphone … free of charge.

I say “payphone”, but in Australia payphones are not in fact “pay” phones. In 2021, Telstra, the now-privatised national telco, made all local and national calls from public phones free – as well as calls to Santa, which I guess count as “international”.

To many of the country’s mobile-absorbed population, it may have appeared an irrelevant nod to a fading technology, like being given a typewriter or top hat. But this overlooks what an important public good communication infrastructure like this is.

Telecommunication devices enable social connection, they give us access to services, and they provide us with safety and security. This is something we often take for granted, but when refugees are forced to leave areas of conflict and often leave all their........

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