Nothing but a memory

With the advent of cellphones, there are not many takers for telephone booths.Typewriters have given way to computers; DVDs and CDs have given way to IPods.

In a similar fashion, there has been a revolution in the telecommunication field — public telephone booths seem to have given way to cellphones, which have made communication convenient, easier and quicker.

These days, cellphones have become so affordable that literally everyone has one — thus making telephone booths fairly redundant.

The fact of the matter is that booths aren’t a failed technology in any circumstances.
   But with the popularity of cellphones, they are now considered obsolete.

Metrolife interacts with some youngsters to find out whether they still use phone booths, or prefer to carry their own cellphones instead.

“We do use these booths sometimes, if we don’t have balance in our cellphones and have to make urgent calls. But that rarely happens,” says Ankit Parmar, a student of Shri Venkateshwara College of Engineering, Vidhyanagar.

Radhika, who works at an IT company, agrees that she no longer uses these booths to make calls.
“After all, cellphones are easy to use and have facilities like texting; having a Blackberry makes life that much easier.

Besides this, most booths charge a rupee per minute of talking but with a variety of plans, service providers often charge a much lower late. The last time I used a telephone booth was when I was in school,” says Radhika.

It isn’t surprising that so many people are steering clear of these booths .In Tavare­kere alone, there are around 11 telephone booths.

But none of them are functional.Sripathi, a shopkeeper from Tavarekere, who has a public telephone in his shop, says that he bought it to earn extra money. But now, nobody uses the machine.

“It’s been six years since I have installed this telephone. Earlier, I used to earn Rs 1,000 every month; now I earn less. There was an STD option in this box but since nobody was using it, I have removed the connection,” says Sivaprakash, another shopkeeper of a general store in Koramangala.
Telecommunication companies too have started to shy away from manufacturing these telephone booths.

Officials from BSNL say that although they still provide connections to these booths, they have completely stopped manufacturing them, since there is no demand for them.