The days of using a phone box have largely gone — we have mobiles now — but a few could stick around for a while yet.
Australia loves its phones, but most of us are relying on the one we can keep in our pockets, our bags, our luggage, and hands. Most of the country is using a mobile phone, with 87 percent of the population reported from Statista this year.
That could be why so many of us have moved on from the phone booth, a box that used to exist in greater quantities in cities, and now exists largely to provide WiFi, calls to Santa during the holiday season, and free calls when you need them now that Telstra has basically made the whole payphone network free.
However, some of these phone booths are being used beyond a simple call or WiFi connection. Telstra notes that over 300,000 calls to emergency and Lifeline services have been made from phone booths in the past year, and nearly 3000 free calls are made from a phones box every hour, roughly amounting to over 25 million annually.
While the number of phone boxes is dwindling over time, Telstra is attempting to get three phone booths shortlisted to say, marking their importance in Australian life and history. The three are found in three states, covering New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, and with local reasons why they matter for long-term historical value.
For instance, a public phone in Brunswick West, Victoria, is marked as “The Support Line”, and is the country’s most called-from public phone to crisis support lines, such as Lifeline and emergency services.
In New South Wales, there’s public phone in Narooma was important for another reason: during the 2019 and 2020 bushfire season, the phone booth was a vital point for people when both power and mobile networks went down. Telstra says it handled nearly 1000 calls in the space of two months.
And in Queensland, there’s a public phone in Doomadgee, which has provided an essential communication tool for residents over decades, helped in past in the last year with the addition of free WiFi access.
A spokesperson for Telstra noted that a heritage listing with the National Trust would formally recognise the significance of its phone boxes and raise awareness of the role they have played in keeping different communities connected, and noted that phone boxes still make an impact.
Today, Telstra reportedly removes underused phone booths, while upgrading and enhancing overs, such as the addition of WiFi at Doomadgee, a phone box Telstra has nicknamed “The Remote Connector”.
Heritage listing would also mean the phone booth sticks around for years to come, even as other phone booths start to disappear.
As to whether that would mean Telstra would keep the phone lines active for each of the three, the telco wouldn’t speculate on how far into the future each of these would be connected. However, a spokesperson did say that so far, it “has remained committed to keeping Australians connected”, continually evolving the phone booth’s status from pay phones to free public phone to free WiFi provider of late.
