|
| |
|
COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA |
| |
|
|
| |
Communications services in New Zealand are generally first-rate, and
excellent international networks make it pretty easy to keep in touch.
The standard of media coverage sometimes leaves a little to be desired,
but for the most part this is a well informed country with relatively
sophisticated tastes
Mail
Post boxes are white, black and red and found everywhere, usually with
some indication of when and how often their contents are collected. Most
New Zealand towns used to boast rather grand Victorian or Edwardian post
offices in or near their centres but these days the majority have been
sold off and postal services are now operated from much less picturesque,
multi-purpose post shops (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, plus Sat 9am-12.30pm in large
towns and cities).
The extremely efficient mail service operates two forms of domestic
delivery: Standard (40˘, or 80˘ for larger envelopes), delivered to any
destination within 2-3 days; and FastPost (80˘, or $1.20 for larger
envelopes), delivered in 1 day from cities and 2 from rural areas.
International air mail takes 3-6 days to reach Australia ($1.10), and
6-12 days to Europe ($1.80), Asia and the United States ($1.50),
depending on where it's posted; prices are higher for larger envelopes.
Aerogrammes cost $1.10 to anywhere in the world, as do air-mail
postcards . Make sure you send your missives by air mail, or the
recipients could be in for a long wait. Stamps are sold at some
newsagents, garages and general stores, as well as at post offices and
post shops. For further information, phone the NZ Post information line
(tel 0800/501 501), call into any post shop, or consult their Web site
at www.nzpost.co.nz . There is also the competing National Post service
(blue boxes) which is marginally cheaper but operates only within New
Zealand and is best ignored.
One post office in each major town operates a Poste Restante service,
where you can receive mail; we've listed the major ones in our town
accounts, and you can get hold of a list of their addresses from the New
Zealand Embassy or Tourism Board in your home country or any Central
Post Office in New Zealand. You need a passport or other ID to collect
mail, which is returned to the sender after three months - though if you
change your plans you can get it redirected (at a charge of $7 within
New Zealand, $10-20 internationally) by filling in a form at any post
office. Most hostels and hotels will also keep mail for you, preferably
marked with your expected date of arrival. Holders of an American
Express card or travellers' cheques can have letters (not packages) sent
to American Express offices, which will hold it for thirty days; you can
pick up a booklet of all their locations from any American Express
office.
Fax and email
Most post offices offer a fax sending service, charging a basic
transaction fee of $2.50 plus a per page fee of $1.50 within New Zealand,
$1.60 to Australia, $3 to North America and $4 to Europe and Asia. Faxes
can also be sent from the vast majority of hostels and motels, and most
hotels, but are not cheap, usually costing around $5 a page overseas and
$1 a page within New Zealand. The average charge for receiving a fax is
$1 a page.
Increasingly faxes are being supplanted by email , and almost everywhere
you go in New Zealand you'll find someone offering Internet access .
We've mentioned places in most town accounts but more are springing up
all the time - visitor centres should be able to point you in the right
direction. The best bet is usually one of the Internet cafés which
continue to spring up all over the place. Rates are usually $2-3 for a
fifteen minute session, $6-8 for an hour; the cafés often let you do a
free email check, though they'll expect you to pay if you want to read
or reply to any. In smaller towns, visitor centres sometimes offer Net
access. Many backpacker hostels also offer access via a coin-operated
machine, and the better B&Bs and lodges will usually allow guests to use
their machine to check email; increasingly places have sockets so you
can plug in your own modem-equipped computer. Internet access is less
common at the cheaper B&Bs and still fairly rare at motels, though this
will undoubtedly change very soon.
Phones
There are two phone companies in New Zealand: the formerly state-run
Telecom , which still has a monopoly on public payphones and local calls,
and Clear , which competes for long-distance and international business.
There is a huge discrepancy between the rates that apply to calls made
from public and private phones in New Zealand, and if at all possible
you should try to use private phones . On a private phone, depending on
the type of line rental, local calls are either free or cost 20˘ for as
long as you want. Long-distance and international calls from New Zealand
cost between a third and a half the daytime rate when dialled outside
peak hours (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm).
Public telephones are pretty easy to find. The most common accept both
credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, AmEx and Diners; minimum call charge $2,
75˘ additional fee) and slot-in phonecards ($5, $10, $20 and $50), which
can be bought at post offices, newsagents, dairies, garages, visitor
centres and supermarkets. You'll also see phones which accept these
cards and coins (10˘, 20˘, 50˘, $1 and $2; no change given); and, rarely,
phones which only accept coins.
Media
New Zealand has no national daily newspaper but it does have three
pretenders: Auckland's New Zealand Herald , which can be found
throughout the northern half of the North Island, Wellington's The
Dominion which covers the rest of the North Island, and Christchurch's
The Press which has widespread readership in the South Island. Each
contains local and national stories, editorial comment and limited
international news - usually gleaned from news agencies, with only a
limited amount of original journalism. Of the three, The Press is
probably the most highly regarded, though the difference between them is
negligible. Most areas also have their own regional paper with extensive
(and often entertainingly parochial) local detail but international
coverage that ranges from fair to woeful. There are two nationwide
Sunday papers : the tabloid Sunday News , and the broadsheet Sunday Star-Times
, which usually has a few worthwhile articles, music and film reviews.
Foreign weekly news digests (such as The Guardian Weekly , The Weekly
Telegraph and one or two incarnations of the less esteemed UK tabloids)
are reasonably widely available through newsagents and supermarkets,
though most international dailies aren't stocked outside big-city
specialist shops. The bigger city libraries usually have a good
selection.
For more in-depth analysis of international news, pick-up a copy of
Newsweek Time or The Economist magazines , which are all widely
available in New Zealand. To keep abreast of Kiwi current affairs, pick
up The Listener , which carries in-depth articles as well as
international and national news, entertainment reviews, and TV and radio
listings. Visiting nature buffs might want to take a look at the
quarterly New Zealand Geographic , and outdoor enthusiasts should keep
an eye out for the sporadically published New Zealand Adventure . To tap
into the edgier end of the Kiwi fashion, music and arts scene, read the
bi-monthly Pavement , a kind of Kiwi version of The Face . |
| |
|
