Last Calls: Bangkok vows to remove all phone booths in the city by December

By Coconuts Bangkok

 

Photo: Nist6dh/ Flickr

 

It will soon be incredibly difficult to find payphones in Bangkok during emergencies as Bangkok Metropolitan Administration plans to wipe out all remaining phone booths in the city by December.

 

The project to remove non-working phone booths were initiated a few years ago, but Bangkok’s new governor, Pol. Gen. Asawin Kwanmuang, yesterday instructed all district chiefs to remove them all — including the ones that still work — by Dec. 1

 

Anyway, it’s no secret that most pay phones in the city no longer work, and are now just sweet spots to put up flyers.

 

Full Story: http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2016/11/04/last-calls-bangkok-vows-remove-all-phone-booths-city-december

 

-- © Copyright Coconuts Bangkok 2016-11-04

The phone booth is woefully out of date, but not replacing them with something more updated is a waste.  They have a telephone lines which could be used as an Internet hot spot.  They could also be used as Kiosks to help navigate a neighborhood.   Just getting rid of them is a waste.   Most countries are doing this.  

This is serious news

No phone booths means no toilets for some and no garbage storage

Oh my not good news for some 

A salute to Bangkok's lastest endangered species in photos.

 

http://www.khaosodenglish.com/life/2016/03/06/1457354547/

3 hours ago, yellowboat said:

The phone booth is woefully out of date, but not replacing them with something more updated is a waste.  They have a telephone lines which could be used as an Internet hot spot.  They could also be used as Kiosks to help navigate a neighborhood.   Just getting rid of them is a waste.   Most countries are doing this.  

They are great for when it rains. Good riddance they are like a Las Vegas slot machine anyways. You deposit 10 bahts say a few words and then are disconnected or asked to deposit more money. I keep watching the coin return to see if I had dialed the right number and won a monetary flow of coins. Drat never happens. 

Boy this new governor really has a grip on his new job what an attention grabber for this newbie. What will he do for an encore?

Well bang goes the 'help me, I need some money to make an urgent telephone call' scam.

 

I got caught out twice when I first arrived in Bangkok.

Does this include Dr Who's Turdis?

I was amazed!!!  For as long as I've been in Thailand, there's been a totally useless/abandoned telephone booth that almost blocks the entire sidewalk very close to the Villa Market on Sukhumvit Soi 11.  Went by there the other day, and the phone booth suddenly was gone, the hole in the ground paved over, and the full width of the sidewalk available to pedestrians again.  I'd call that just a small bit of progress.

 

However, like so many things here, the Thais have taken the kernel of a good idea (removing or replacing broken phones/phone booths) and expanded it into a whitewashed bad idea (removing all public phones everywhere, regardless). There ought to be at least SOME out there on the streets of the city that can be kept in service and not be located in places that block access. There's still a value in having old land-line phones available, especially in times of major emergencies.