Any better ways of BTC <-> SMS?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

So I'm in Australia and I have prepaid mobile from Optus. I pay $35 a month and I get $28.75 actual 'credit' that I can use, $500 "Optus Money", along with 5GB of data. I never actually use my real $$$ credit, when I make calls it deducts it from Optus Money, when I use data it deducts it from data.

Since I'm paying for the SIM no matter what, I have $28.75 of "real money" each month that I can spend. Blockchain.info's wallet SMS service costs $4 and gives you $0.97 worth of bitcoins. Any better ways of doing this?

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[hamdi]

telcos always keep 40% of the costs at minimum. there are a lot of middlemen.
sms is a shitty way to pay...

[Binford 6100]

I have a similar problem. I keep topping up a prepaid card every 3-4 months to keep it alive but I don't always use the credit, currently accumulated ~15btc worth of prepaid services this way. if I could get 50% out of it in actual bitcoins, that would be great.
It might be easier to trade the SIM it with someone visiting EU who wants to make cheap local calls (ceiling on roaming fees for voice and text prices) than spending the credit on sms bitcoin purchases.
currently is the card prepaid with 6 hours of outgoing calls roaming the whole EU.
Pity Vladimir discontinued his service in January/February

[Zollen]

Also interestead. Unfortunately blockchain has very high rates, almost twice as higher as Gox.

[Zeek_W]

Thanks for letting me know about this feature - didn't know about it. I usually end up with about $100-$150 extra credit at the end of each month.