Australia’s largest Telecommunications provider, Telstra, will be charging customers in a new way starting next month.

The system is being implemented under a new billing scheme that will enable Telstra to make that little bit extra on short phone calls.

Kelly Burke @ The Sydney Morning Herald reported the changes as follows:

“Under the existing system, a customer paying 20 cents a minute for an STD call would be charged 5 cents for a call lasting 15 seconds. Under the new system, the same 15-second call would cost twice as much, because the minimum charge would be 10 cents for 30 seconds.”

A 35-second call previously costing about 12 cents will jump to 20 cents, because the consumer will be charged for 60 seconds.”

Telstra says it’s just bringing its fixed line plans in line with current mobile billing. Jenny Young, executive director of consumer marketing at Telstra defended to the SMH that:

“It’s just not that much of an issue,”

“We offer many cost-effective home plans which have caps on STD calls, and there are no changes [to the cost] of local calls, which have remained steady for years.”