Telecom pay phone use plummets

Calls made over Telecom's public pay phones peaked at 30 million in 2003 but have dropped to less than 12 million a year since then. In the same time Telecom has also removed 1000 of the pay phones around the country. The rapid decrease in pay phone use comes at the time when the number of cellphones in New Zealand in use is now larger than the the number of the population itself.

The popularity of pay phones has been crashing around the world, AT&T in the United States and Telstra in Australia are both getting out of the pay phone business. Many other countries across the globe have already done so. However, Telecom say they are not looking at removing New Zealand's pay phone service and that they will not be likely to any time in the near future.

Telecom spokesman Ian Bonnar says that although increased cellphone use has caused pay phones to take a hammering, the public phones are still a valuable service to New Zealand.

"Even though numbers have declined, there are still 12 million calls," Bonnar said.

"We continue to invest in the network and [are] still putting some in, but we will take some out where they are gathering dust."

The busiest pay phones are those at prisons, Auckland Airport, the Sky Tower, and in the CBD's of large cities. The pay phone used the least is one of four at Auckland's Vector Arena - it was used only twice in one year.

Telecom surveyed the use of the pay phones earlier this year but found it it was difficult to identify patterns of use. They found that people used them when they did not have access to a cellphone or landline, when they were travelling, or when the pay phone happened to be convenient at the time a user wanted to make a phone call.

I personally never use public pay phones myself as I never carry coins with me and do not want to purchase a phone card. I always try to carry my cellphone with me when I am in public, but would be more inclined to use a public pay phone if the cost of call was cheaper than on a cellphone and if the pay phone had the ability to pay by EFTPOS or credit card.