The triumph of cellphones, portable e-mail devices and other mobile tools, which are all declining in price and increasing in use, is slowly but surely eroding the market for public telephones. Soon, there will be no pay phones left.
I remember when the movie Phone Booth came out reading about how few pay phone booths remained in Manhattan. With everyone and their brother carrying around a cellphone, the pay phone has become obsolete. As I see it, there's only one problem with eliminating pay phones...
Shockingly, I don't own a cellphone. Despite my fondness for technological gadgets and such, I've somehow managed to survive this long without ever owning one. There are several reasons why I've resisted the temptation. For one, nobody really calls me. If someone needs something from me, they know email is their best bet. If it's something important and time sensitive, there's a phone at my desk and another in my kitchen. If I'm in neither of those places, I'm simply not reachable. Thus far this hasn't been a problem.
If I'm going to own a cellphone, it's going to have to be much more than just a phone. It's going to have to play my MP3s, connect me to the Internet and allow me to connect remotely to my home and work computers to access documents and applications. When they release a phone that will enable me to do all of that at a reasonable price, I'll enter the market.
In the meantime, they've got to keep a few phone booths around for guys like me.
