Payphones
Coin- or card-operated payphones widely used till the 1990s may be fast disappearing but they will always be a significant part of telecommunications history and a fond memory to many.
Beginnings of Payphones
Once a common feature in many cities and towns around the world, payphones served as an important means of communication in an era when the mobile phone hadnt been invented and personal mobile devices were expensive to own. While many payphones were already installed in Western countries like America and Britain by the 1930s, Asia was slower to adopt this mode of communication. Even in countries that have efficient telecommunication systems now, like Singapore, public phones were rare in the 1950s and 1960s. In Singapore, there was only one public phone serving 6,500 residents in Sembawang Hills Estate in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, there were about 250 public phones in Singapore, which means there were 3.75 phones for every 100 people. This ratio placed Singapore above Hong Kong, Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City, which have phonesper-hundred-people figures of 3.2, 1.8 and 0.9 respectively. By the 19080s, there were some 25,000 coin-operated public phones that typically accepted 10-cent coins. These phones were not easy to maintain. Coin collectors had to be regularly dispatched to collect the coins in them, which were often vandalised or prised open and stolen from. These challenges led to the introduction of cashless, cardoperated payphones that required people to buy phone cards with credit and insert them into payphones to make calls. Singtel, or Telecoms as it was called till 1988, installed its first card-operated phone in 1985 in a one-year trial that aimed to gauge public acceptance of this new system. Its successs led to the installation of many more at Telecoms outlets, post offices and high-demand places. The phones accepted magnetic cards, cards with hologram technology and those with builtin programmed integrated circuit chips and allowed users to dial directly to as many as 155 countries in the world.
To prevent users making local calls from hogging the card phones, coin phones and card phones were co-located in high usage areas (like Raffles Place) and the latter were programmed to only allow overseas calls.
At their zenith, rows of them could be found on every street and telephone companies raked in huge profits from payphones owned by them. Singtel, or Telecoms as it was then called, earned a record SGD24 million from its public payphones in 1988. It was the most profitable statutory board in Singapore, with assets exceeding SGD4.2 billion by the late 1990s.
The Decline Of Payphones
With the invention of the mobile phone and its subsequent popularity, payphones have become less of a desideratum. Their declining usage is also exacerbated by the increasing availability and affordability of mobile phones with phone companies producing cheaper models to target lower-end segments. Additionally, a considerable number of people who do not have mobile phones use those belonging to their family, neighbours or friends. As a result, countries around the world have reported large decreases in the number of payphones in operation as well as the number of calls made from payphones. The lowered demand has forced payphone operators to downsize operations or close down altogether. In India, it was reported as early as in 2003 that mobile price wars pushed tariffs down to levels even lower than those offered by public call offices (PCOs).
In Singapore, the number of payphones has fallen to around 2,000 from over 25,000 20 years ago. Hong Kongs state-run rail operator, MTR Corporation Limited, removed payphones at all its train stations in 2016.
The number of coin-operated payphones in Hong Kong fell from more than 6,000 in the 1980s and 1990s to about 3,000. Shinetown Telecom, a long-time operator of payphones in Hong Kong train stations, reported profits of HKD4,000 (around USD500) per phone around the year 2000 when it owned more than 2,000 payphones. Now, the company only operates about 100 payphones. According to the Japanese governments 2015 information and communications white paper, 183,655 pay phones remained in Japan as of the end of March 2015, less than half compared to the same time in 2006. In the US, the number of payphones in operation has experienced a consistent year-on-year decline from its peak of 2.1 million in 1999 to some 100,000 in 2018.
The Relevance Of Payphones Today In view of the payphones apparent demise, do they still exist and do people still use them? The answer, to both questions, is yes. The reasons that sparked their proliferation a
century ago are the very same ones they are still in use today the payphone is a reliable means of communication when your mobile phone cannot do its job. You will appreciate a payphones existence when you find yourself in remote places where network signals are non-existent and in emergency situations such as when you have no access to your mobile phone, its battery is flat or you need to make a call urgently when your prepaid card has zero credit. And although many countries in Asia have well-developed communication networks, there are people in developing countries who dont have fixed phone lines in their homes. Furthermore, while mobile penetration rates are high in many Asian countries, there are low-income communities who cannot afford to own a personal mobile phone.
In Japan, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed communication facilities and the high concentration of calls from Tahara, Aichi Prefecture caused the disruption of some 90 percent of mobile-phone and fixedline transmissions. The incident prompted residents of the city to request phone operators to set up more payphones in the area. Authorities recognised that payphones provide an important means for people to ask for help or report on situations in the event of a natural disaster and increased the number of payphones in Tahara to 74. The phones, which are installed outdoors and accessible 24 hours a day, can be used free of charge during large-scale disasters.
Universal service obligations (USOs) that ensure that every resident has access to basic telecommunication services such as fixed telephone lines had fuelled the rise of payphones in countries within and outside of Asia. Many countries implemented USO policies involving public payphones and PCOs as these shared-service models were considered efficient ways to provide these services.
Although payphones have been gradually supplanted by mobile phones in the past two decades, coin and card phones can still be found in many Asian countries because of USOs. India, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka had established USOs to ensure access to telecommunication services in rural and remote areas. In India and Pakistan, for example, pay-per-use fixedline phones offering local and international call facilities are still available at local PCOs. Thailands 2005 universal service policy rules specify the installation of at least three public payphones per village and at least two public payphones in schools, hospitals, and public institutions. Sri Lankas Rural Payphone Subsidy Scheme offers a subsidy for existing and prospective payphone operators for each rural payphone installation. Over in Hong Kong, the Telecommunications Ordinance mandates the provision of a reasonable number of public payphones, and its government reportedly spent HKD29.7 million (USD3.8 million) in 2013 on uneconomic payphone subsidies. To
The reasons that sparked their proliferation a century ago are the very same ones they are still in use today the payphone is a reliable means of communication when your mobile phone cannot do its job.
ensure public safety and provide minimum access to communication while outdoors, the Telecommunications Business Law regulations in Japan state that there should be one public pay phone installed every 500 square metres in urban areas and one every square kilometre in rural areas.
Exact numbers of payphones currently available in individual countries are hard to pin down but they are roughly in the thousands in the more developed Asian countries. As at early 2017, there were at least 14 licensed operators providing public payphone services in Singapore. Among them are Firstcomm, which operates about 1,000 payphones, Singtel, which operates about 1,500 payphone, and Starhub. These phones are mostly located
in HDB estates and tourist attractions, and the ones in Tekka Centre reportedly serve approximately 100 users a day. Singtel, acknowledging the usefulness of payphones for emergencies and for those without mobile phones, had no plans to discontinue its payphone services according to a Straits Times report in 2016. In Taiwan, coin phones and card phones, operated either with a magnetic strip phone card (sold in railway stations, bus stations, scenic spots, and convenience stores) or an IC type one, are still fairly common.
The number of mobile phone users is expected to hit 4,764 million in 2020. Even though the mobile phone has almost supplanted payphones, the latter still has its use today. ag