The pay-phone is not dead!

Mobiles didn't kill it yet, says Oftel

By Lucy Sherriff • Get more from this author

Posted in Data Networking, 14th February 2001 15:59 GMT

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It turns out that people who don't have mobiles or fixed landline phones use payphones more than any other group.

This earth-shattering fact is just one of an array of useful conclusions draw by Oftel researchers from their latest research into the telephone habits of the average Brit.

They also discovered that people who use a mobile phone still have to, on occasion, resort to public phone booths, in particular when their battery has run down, or there is no signal. Some mobile users even preferred making a call from a payphone if they thought there was a danger of losing the signal mid call.

More interestingly, there is a perception among the public, or at least the sample that was questioned, that BT payphones are run as a public service.

Apparently there is a "stick with what you know" attitude to phone booths and people prefer to use BT booths even when there are others available.

The news comes just days after BT announced that it would not be adding to its pay phone network this year for the first time since it started installing them. ®

BT cuts off payphones

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