Picture of the Day: Public Pay Phones

Three pay phones at City Hall Concert Hall... who uses them nowadays?

Does anyone use these anymore?

I spied not one but three payphones while waiting in line for the washroom at City Hall Concert Hall last weekend. A 2016 news report says there are about 3,000 left around town.

With everyone having on average two mobile phones, who uses these coin-operated phones anymore?

OK so maybe you need the phone and have the coins, but do you remember the phone number you need to call? I don't.

In any event Hong Kong still has a "reasonable number" of public payphones as required by the Telecommunications Ordinance, as public payphones are considered a "basic service" under the universal service obligation, which "should be made available to all persons in Hong Kong".

However, the Ordinance doesn't specify what the minimum amount is.

Is 3,000 too many or too few? It's anyone's guess...

End of an Era

There won't be payphones like this in MTR stations anymore

It was bound to happen eventually, but the payphones in all 87 MTR stations will begin to be phased out from January because Shinetown Telecom, the latest payphone operator in Hong Kong will not renew its contract after it expires on December 31.

An MTR spokesperson said the company tried to contact other operators, but no one expressed any interest.

As a result some 390 pay phones will be removed from next month, and they should be all gone by the end of the first quarter of 2016.

A payphone at Sha Tin station that will be removed soon

From 2003, Shinetown Telecom installed payphones in all of the then Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation's West Rail stations, before eventually extending service for the East Rail Line and Ma On Shan Line in 2004. Five years later its payphones had covered the entire network.

But with practically everyone having some kind of mobile phone, the vast majority owning smartphones, there was probably little money made in payphones. While it's a good service to have, it wasn't financially viable.

The number of payphones in Hong Kong will decrease significantly as a result. The Office of the Communications Authority reported in March there were 1,632 payphones across Hong Kong (including in MTR stations), down from about 1,920 in 2000.

This contrasts with the number of mobile phone subscribers -- 17.1 million -- almost 2.5 two mobiles per person in the city...