I must have had my head in the sand for a while, as I heard about Telstra’s latest offering on the news – free calls to Santa from their payphones! Unfortunately, Channel 10 didn’t tell us the number … but that was easy enough to find. While I’m not a kid anymore, this was still a gift too good to pass-up – a reason to visit the local payphone (or two).

The Offer

It turns out, this is not the first time it’s happened. Back in 2021, in the midst of people still being COVID-19-cautious, Telstra offered free calls to Santa from payphones by dialling #HOHOHO (#464646). This was not long after their change to payphones to offer free calling to all Australian destinations.

I must have missed this, as I wouldn’t ever pass-up an opportunity like this. Landline phones are slowly becoming extinct – the reassuring dial-tone, the bleeps of DTMF … you don’t hear that much anymore.

Apparently, all you have to do is visit a payphone and place a call. This activity is being marketed as a good opportunity to teach the kids about telephones, where they are and how to use them in case of an emergency. While a smartphone is arguably more convenient and it’s almost impossible to think of everyone not having one of their own or them not working for some reason, I have to agree that being able to use a traditional phone may still be an important life skill. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance your local payphone has been “converted” from an old-fashioned land-line into something a bit more “VoIPey” on some data connection, as the NBN seemingly has savaged all land-lines for good. In the case of an infrastructure emergency (e.g. prolonged power loss, significant loss of data capacity), I don’t expect payphones to fare any better. On the upside, perhaps the kids will still be fooled by something so simple as a voice over a phone line.

An interesting change seems to be hinted by this excerpt:

Here’s a little secret for parents: you can also find the phone number for each payphone on our locator as well – so when you’re done with Santa, you can ring the payphone from your mobile and show your kids what a real old-fashioned ringing phone sounds like!

Indeed, the new payphone locator page does have actual inbound numbers for the payphones, most of which will ring just fine on an incoming call. I used to call out from them to capture the ID, but apparently now, that’s not needed. Pranksters seem to have exploited this ability already – I’ve had a payphone ring on me, but I didn’t answer.

But perhaps you’re not all that interested in hearing some message from Santa – well, here’s another incentive:

Telstra will donate $1 per call to # HO HO HO (#464646) to the Salvation Army, up to a predetermined amount.

I don’t know what that amount is … but that just means I can call away and not feel any guilt about doing so.

On the Hunt for Santa

Readers who are familiar with the Australian numbering format will find that #464646 is not exactly a valid, ordinary number. It looks a bit more like a feature code that is too long. Indeed, if you’re willing to try dialing it from a (Telstra) mobile, all you get is this.

“The number you have called is not connected. Please check the number before calling again. NHG-2.”

I don’t fear the chastising voice of a machine, but I will concede that I expected this much.

So I had to visit a payphone to start my journey of connecting with Santa. I bought along my magnetic pick-up, similar to how phone phreakers documented their exploits, to see if I can capture some audio as this service was for a limited time only, expiring on 24th December.

My first visit was Schofields railway station where, surprisingly, the payphone was dead. It had light, but no dial tone and no display. I was on my way to work, so I hopped onto the train just as a Telstra van was circling the station.

I hopped off on the next stop down the line, Quakers Hill. Here, the payphone was alive, although the line was crackly like a shortwave radio at times. Seems like the payphones aren’t in great condition.

It seems the payphones have been reprogrammed for this event, now displaying “DIAL #HO HO HO TO TALK TO SANTA“.

Picking up the receiver and punching in the number, the display changes to “CALLING SANTA…“.

While connected, the display scrolls the message “HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS“.

The audio from the station was low in amplitude and riddled with noise. I gave one more attempt by looking for the payphone at Western Sydney University’s Parramatta South campus – where I was working for the day.

From that payphone, here is a short prelude I recorded by calling my own voicemail service … but unfortunately the audio was not any better. At least the payphone itself works well and you get to hear what a call from a payphone sounds like.

Santa Lives at …

When you use a payphone and dial a number, the number is not directly keyed onto the line. The payphones instead seem to buffer up the digits dialled until a valid number is entered, then it dials it out onto the line at a fixed cadence like a modem does.

Because the earpiece is not muted, we can hear the DTMF digits being dialled down the line …

As any phone phreak knows – in-band signalling can be quite perilous, as this exposes the true location of #464646.

Decoding the DTMF digits dialled, the payphone dials …

(02) 7908 6230

… down the line. As this is an ordinary land-line number, you can call this number from any service (e.g. a mobile) and get a chance to connect with Santa … just not from a payphone. The number itself implies Sydney, NSW as the geographic region, but since the advent of VoIP and number portability, such patterns are not as rigid as they used to be.

Imagine what would happen if the kids knew that their calls were being terminated in Sydney … I guess that’s why the first thing that happens on an answer is the message – “Your call is being diverted to Santa’s workshop.”  So, I suppose you can tell the children that this number is just a front for the real number … that’s hidden behind a diversion!

I’ve Got You on Tape!

Understanding that the era of the telephone may soon be on its way out, I decided to preserve this service by mapping the full call-flow of their interactive voice response (IVR) system. It’s basically the same kind of thing you’ll hear from most companies when you call their hotlines – just adapted to be more kid-friendly with a Christmas theme. To do this, I placed a series of strategic calls from my mobile and recorded the output on a PCM recorder over analog connection. As a result, the audio is slightly worse than a direct non-transcoded G.711a VoIP call, but AMR-NB isn’t too bad overall when you have a 5-bar signal. We do lose a little more, as the final uploaded audio is encoded in MPEG-4 AAC.

Of note is that some of these samples have audible artifacts in them – this seems to be the fault of the service itself – repeated calls reveal artifacts in the same location which would be very unlikely to occur.

With these recordings, you can simulate your own call to Santa, even after the event is ov