{"id":221373,"date":"2018-01-26T08:40:02","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T06:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=221373"},"modified":"2018-01-26T08:40:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T06:40:02","slug":"telkom-hopes-to-ditch-payphones-in-south-africa-within-the-next-6-months-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/221373\/telkom-hopes-to-ditch-payphones-in-south-africa-within-the-next-6-months-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Telkom hopes to ditch payphones in South Africa within the next 6 months: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Telkom has indicated that it plans to eliminate a number of outdated services, including public payphones, as a means of cutting down on costs.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in an interview with the the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/fm\/fm-fox\/2018-01-25-how-telkom-killed-the-payphone\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Financial Mail<\/a><\/strong> on Thursday,\u00a0Telkom\u2019s consumer business head, Attila Vitai said that the move forms part of the company&#8217;s repositioning as provider of data-based communication services.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were employing people to go out into the Karoo to empty a coin box,&#8221; said\u00a0Vitai.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It would cost us something like R2,000 to send someone out to collect the money, and there was like 10c in the coin box \u2014 it really is uneconomical.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Vitai said that subject to Icasa and government&#8217;s approval, it would only have payphones in a few key locations within the next six months.<\/p>\n<p>This is because the company was still bound by regulations to provide the payphones as a\u00a0community-service element, he said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/221215\/first-subsea-cable-linking-africa-and-south-america-nears-completion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">First subsea cable linking Africa and South America nears completion<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Telkom has indicated that it plans to eliminate a number of outdated services, including public payphones, as a means of cutting down on costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,65],"class_list":["post-221373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-headline","tag-telkom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221373"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221409,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373\/revisions\/221409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}