THUNDER BAY — The payphone era is about to come to an end in Thunder Bay.
Tbaytel has begun the process of decommissioning and removing its last 197 payphones in the city, saying they’re simply not being used enough to warrant the cost of upkeeping the coin-and credit-card-operated phones.
Jamie Smith, a spokesperson for the publicly-owned utility, on Monday said even the busiest public payphones are only used on average once every five days. Some have sat idle for two years or more, said Smith, noting the rise in cell phone use has in large part made payphones obsolete.
At their height, Smith estimated there were as many as 800 payphones located throughout Thunder Bay.
“It’s just kind of a sign of the times that declining usage has reduced the numbers,” Smith said. “Based on what we’ve been seeing, in some cases these payphones haven’t been used in two years. In the highest range of uses, it’s about once every five days.
“As a result, as of March 31 we will be decommissioning the remaining payphones we have in the city, which is pretty standard if you look at other providers over the last decade.”
Smith said the credit-card-enabled phones should all be out of commission by the end of March, but he expects some of the coin-operated phones may stick around a little longer. He added many of the payphones are situated within businesses and Tbaytel has spoken to most, if not all, of the business owners about the plan to remove them.
“We’re going to work with those organizations and businesses should they require an alternative method of access for people. We’ve been letting all the businesses and organizations know that this is happening. We have decals on the payphones letting the public know,” Smith said.
“We work with a lot of organizations to get people access. They’re the subject matter experts, so they’re going to tell us what people in our community need and we’ll certainly work with them to get that done.”
According to a 2017 ABC News report, the payphone was first installed in 1889 at a bank in Hartford, Conn. The first outdoor coin payphone was installed in 1905 in Cincinnati. Six years ago, according to the CRTC, there were 55,000 payphones in operation in Canada.
