Like Mark Twain's, payphones' demise greatly exaggerated

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 08:24

Opinion and Analysis

Internet café operator, Everywhere Internet has pronounced that Telstra's payphones are "a dying breed" and "an endangered species". Well, we all knew that, but the logic behind Everywhere Internet's prognosis of terminal decline might surprise you.

With almost every Australian owning a cellphone it is not surprising that Telstra's payphones are losing money hand over fist and that Telstra is doing its best to remove as many as it can get away with. However, according to EI, cellphones are not the only cause of the problem.

A survey of 1000 people in Sydney by EI claims to have found that "85 percent had reduced their usage or stopped using Telstra phone boxes after they discovered voice calls over the Internet...[They] now avoid Telstra’s phone boxes, unless in an emergency, preferring Internet cafes to make calls...[and] more than 60 percent of those making voice calls over the net are now also making video calls, with Skype the most popular vehicle for them."

Surprised by this? So was I, so I asked how this result was achieved. How was the sample selected? Turns out that not only was it an online survey of Internet users but of those using EI's Internet cafes! Maybe they should have stood outside a few payphone booths and asked how many of the callers used Internet cafes.