Era of payphones ends in Estonia on December 1

The era of payphones ends in Estonia on December 1, 2010. AS Elion, who owns the payphones that haven’t been dismantled yet, withdraws payphone cards from sale on October 15. The last call from a payphone can be made on November 30.

“We will start dismantling payphones on December 1. We are ready to give them for example to artists if they want to make installations of payphones, for example,” said Elion’s PR head Lilian Nõlvak.

“The payphone business is loss-making and unpopular among clients. The number of calls fell from 2004 by nearly 30 times,” she added.

In 1997 when the installation of modern payphones using chip cards was completed, there were 3,000 of them in Estonia. By now there are just about 550, most of them in Tallinn.

While in 2004 still 6 million minutes worth of calls were made from payphones, now it is 30 times smaller due to the wide spread of cell phones. The annual sales volume of payphone call cards has fallen by 20 time since 2004.

source:
http://www.baltic-course.com/