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- Telkom's payphones have fallen into disuse.
- Phone booths used to be a popular way to make calls before digital technologies were widely used.
- Telkom now has more operational phone booths in prisons than in the general public.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
There are now more Telkom payphones in prisons than in the general public.
The telecommunications giant told News24 that it while it still has some public phones in operation, the majority are in South Africa's prisons.
Once a popular way to make phone calls, tickey boxes, as they are often referred to in South Africa, stopped being used as frequently as mobile phone technology has risen in prominence.
To make a call on a phone booth, coins are inserted into the machine in exchange for time on the line. If more time was needed, more coins could be inserted. Another method involved buying a card with credit on it and inserting it to make a call.
Twenty years ago, South Africa’s green and blue Telkom phone booths were easily recognisable and widely available. As of 2003, there were 179 000 payphones in the country, News24 reported previously.
However, they fell into disuse as cheaper and more practical digital technologies became widely available.
Telkom has previously floated ideas of how to repurpose the booths. In 2014 the company said it was thinking of turning them into wi-fi hotspots.
READ | Wi-Fi payphones?
The idea was touted as having the potential to create a massive network that could provide broadband access to millions of South Africans.
Nothing came of it.
News24 asked Telkom how many payphones are still active in the country, but that question was not answered.
Decommissioning
Telkom said that it plans to migrate the remaining payphone customers to newer technology.
"With the introduction of new generation network technologies, over time customers will be migrated to mobile connectivity," it said.
This decommissioning process has been undertaken the world over.
The last public payphone was removed from New York City in May of 2022, NPR reported.
In the United Kingdom, the country’s iconic red phone booths have been given a new lease on life. CBS News reported that UK telephone boxes had been converted into a florist, a library, a coffee shop, and ironically a cell phone repair shop.
