Telephone booth

Starting in the 1970s, pay telephones were less and less commonly placed in booths in the United States. In many cities where they were once common, telephone booths have now been almost completely replaced by non-enclosed pay phones. In the United States, this replacement was caused, at least in part, by an attempt to make the pay telephones more accessible to disabled people. However, in the United Kingdom, telephones remained in booths more often than the non-enclosed setup. Although still fairly common, the number of phone boxes has declined sharply in Britain since the late 1990s due to the boom of mobile phones.

Many locations that provide pay-phones mount the phones on kiosks rather than in booths—this relative lack of privacy and comfort discourages lengthy calls in high-demand areas such as airports.

Special equipment installed in some telephone booths allows a caller to use a computer, a portable fax machine, or a telecommunications device for the deaf.

The increasing use of mobile phones has led to a decreased demand for pay telephones, but the increasing use of laptops is leading to a new kind of service. In 2003, service provider Verizon announced that they would begin offering wireless computer connectivity in the vicinity of their phone booths in Manhattan. As of 2006, the Verizon wifi telephone booth service was discontinued in favor of the more expensive Verizon Wireless' EVDO system.[8]

This allows a computer user to connect with remote computer services by means of a short-range device stationed within the booth. The caller pays for usage by means of a pre-arranged account code stored inside the caller's computer. Wireless access is motivating telephone companies to place wireless stations at locations that have traditionally hosted telephone booths, but stations are also appearing in new kinds of locations such as libraries, cafés, and trains. Phone booths have been slowly disappearing since the advent of the mobile phone in 1973.

A rise in vandalism has prompted several companies to manufacture simpler booths with extremely durable pay phones.

Pay phones may still be used by mobile/cellular phone users if their phones become unusable, get stolen, or for other emergency uses. These uses may make the complete disappearance of pay phones in the near future less likely.

Under the Universal Service Obligation (USO), the Government legally requires telco Telstra to ensure standard phone services and payphones are “reasonably accessible to all people in Australia". Some communities, particularly in remote regional areas, rely on payphones, as well as people who do not have access to a mobile phone.

At their peak in the early 1990s, there were more than 80,000 public phone boxes across the country. By June 30, 2016, according to the ACMA there were about 24,000 payphones across Australia. On 3 August 2021, with 15,000 public phones remaining across Australia, Telstra announced that all calls to fixed line and mobile phones within Australia from public phones would become free of charge, and that Telstra had no plans to further eliminate public phones.[9]

In Belgium, majority state-owned telco Belgacom took the last remaining phone booths out of service on 1 June 2015.[10]

On 17 June 2021 the last phone booth in Czechia was closed and dismantled.[11][12]

On 13 December 2017 the last three public telephone booths in Denmark had their telephones removed.[13] They were situated in the town of Aarhus.

Telephone booth in Hervanta, Tampere, Finland in 2006

By 2007, Finnet companies and TeliaSonera Finland had discontinued their public telephones, and the last remaining operator Elisa Oyj did that during the beginning of that year.[14]

According to Orange CEO, Stéphane Richard, there are only 26 public phone booths[15] still operating in France as of 2021. The "Macron law" of 2015 ended Orange mandatory maintenance of a public phone booth network, its decline in use being caused by the cell phones era. These are, by law, maintained in rural area where there is no cell phone service. Consequently, they are removed once the area is properly covered by at least one mobile phone operator.

A telephone booth in France prior to the switch to the euro. Coins are Francs on the labels. It also uses the rotary dial and the 20 centimes coin, which means the device dates back to circa 1980.

Eir, the Universal Service Obligation carrier with regard to payphones, has been systematically removing payphones which fall under the minimum requirement for retention, of a rolling average of one minute of usage a day over six months [16]

As of June 2019, 456 locations retain payphones (with none in the entirety of County Leitrim); down from 1320 in March 2014.[17]

In 2004, Jordan became the first country in the world not to have telephone booths generally available. The mobile/cellular phone penetration in that country is so high that telephone booths have hardly been used at all for years. The two private payphone service companies, namely ALO and JPP, closed down, and currently there's no payphone service to speak of.[18]

The last functioning phone box in Norway was taken out of service in June 2016. However, 100 phone boxes have been preserved around the country and are protected under cultural heritage laws.[19]

The first telephone booth in Sweden was erected in 1890. In 1981 there were 44,000 of them,[20] but in 2013, there were only 1,200, with a withdrawal of the last one in 2015.[21] A survey showed that in 2013, only 1% of the population in Sweden used one the previous year.[21]

The red telephone kiosk is recognised as a British icon and the BT Group still hold intellectual property rights in the designs of many of the telephone boxes, including registered trade mark rights. [22] BT is steadily removing public telephone kiosks from the streets of the UK. It is permitted to remove a kiosk without consultation provided that there is another kiosk within 400 m (1,300 ft) walking distance. In other cases, it is required to comply with Ofcom rules in consultation with the local authority.[23] Some decommissioned red telephone boxes have been converted for other uses with the permission of BT Group, such as housing small community libraries or automated external defibrillators.[24][25]

In 1999, there were approximately 2 million phone booths in the United States. Only 5% of those remained in service by 2018. About a fifth of America's 100,000 remaining pay phones are in New York, according to the FCC. However, only 4 phone booths remain in New York City, all on Manhattan's Upper West Side; the rest have been converted into WiFi hotspots. Incoming calls are no longer available, and outgoing calls are now free. In February 2020, the city confirmed that despite a plan to remove dozens of pay phones, the iconic booths would continue to be maintained.[26][27]

Following the commencement of the smoking ban in England in 2007, it became illegal to smoke in red telephone boxes (types K2 to K8), due to these boxes being completely enclosed spaces. The smoking ban requires owners to display no smoking signs, which has resulted in BT displaying a "no smoking" sticker which refer to the telephone box as "premises". Despite smoking in red telephone boxes being banned, smoking in other telephone boxes remains legal as these boxes are not completely enclosed spaces.

Many telephone boxes in the United Kingdom have become locations for advertisements, bearing posters, with the development of "StreetTalk" by JCDecaux.[28] This is in addition to the ST6 public telephone introduced in 2007 which is designed to feature a phone on one side and a JCDecaux-owned advertising space on the otherside. The advertising pays for the running of the phone.

In 2018, the UK Local Government Association drew attention to "Trojan" telephone boxes. These are telephone boxes whose main purpose is advertising. A loophole in planning law allows these to be erected without planning permission and the LGA is seeking to close this loophole.[29]