Southerners stay on phone longer

They obviously have plenty to say in the Awatere Valley near Blenheim, because a national survey shows residents there spend more time on the phone than everyone else in New Zealand.

According to the Telecom survey, Awatere subscribers spend nine hours and 29 minutes a month on the phone.

And they also make the most calls a month - an average of 116, and more than double the calls Wellingtonians make a month.

For the survey, Telecom monitored the average call length and number of local and national calls made by its customers nationwide from their home phones for six months from September last year to February 2005.

The national monthly average was four hours and 30 minutes.

Mayfield, near Ashburton in Mid Canterbury, claimed the second-highest monthly average - they talk for seven hours and eight minutes a month there, and further south in Middlemarch, Central Otago, they have the third-highest national talking rate at six hours and 51 minutes.

The South Island takes the first four places in Telecom's survey. At Cave, near Timaru, they talk for six hours and 43 minutes a month.

The North Island's chattiest town is Waiwera, north of Auckland.

Telecom spokeswoman Melanie Marshall said that urban areas did not make a showing in the rankings until the No 34 spot, where residents of Manukau spent 5 1/2 hours on the phone monthly.

City dwellers in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are positioned at numbers 51, 249 and 89 respectively, averaging four hours and 18 minutes monthly talk time. A total of 386 centres were surveyed.

In Waiwera, subscribers chat for six hours and 24 minutes a month, followed on the North Island list by Towai in Northland with six hours and 11 minutes.

The research showed country residents talked more on the phone than urban towns and in Auckland residents made an average of 80 phone calls a month.

Talk time

Top five town or areas for using Telecom home phone lines by month.

Awatere Valley, Blenheim: 9h 29m a month.
Mayfield, Ashburton: 7h 8m.
Middlemarch, Otago: 6h 51m.
Cave, Timaru 6h 43m.
Waiwera, Hibiscus Coast: 6h 24m.


- NZPA