The end of the pay phone system? The Japanese government plans to get rid of them
Pay phones were life-saving for those of us who are old enough to recall life before the advent of the mobile phone era, whether you were ringing your dad to come and pick you up from swimming or calling your wife, pretending you were staying at a friend’s house while you were actually up to other sinister actions. But the need for public phones is getting smaller and smaller these days. Connect that to the maintenance costs needed to keep these virtually obsolete relics running, and it’s fair to say the humble pay phone doesn’t look promising in the future.
Actually, in Japan, pay phones are considered a ‘universal service’; a word meaning anything that is readily accessible to all people at a reasonable price. City areas are expected to have a public pay phone built every 500 square meters, with non-city areas every kilometer, according to current regulations.
There are currently 110,000 payphones scattered across Japan, with an additional 40,000 pay phones installed by businesses, but their use has fallen to only two percent of what it used to be, according to figures over the past 20 years.
As a result, the government is currently considering decreasing the number of pay phones in Japan and shifting existing pay phones to emergency centers for use in emergencies.
In consultation with the Information and Communications Bureau, Ryota Takeda from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will make a decision which is expected to be taken by June.
Source: Japan Today
