{"id":295110,"date":"2019-01-24T12:19:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T10:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=295110"},"modified":"2019-01-24T15:40:38","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T13:40:38","slug":"why-telkom-cant-completely-ditch-payphones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/295110\/why-telkom-cant-completely-ditch-payphones\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Telkom can&#8217;t completely ditch payphones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of January 2018, Telkom said that it planned to eliminate a number of outdated services, including public payphones, as a means of cutting down on costs.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with 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 Times\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>(January 2018), Telkom\u2019s former consumer business head, Attila Vitai said that the move was part of the company\u2019s repositioning as provider of data-based communication services.<\/p>\n<p>He added that payphones were particularly expensive due to some of the hidden costs involved.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were employing people to go out into the Karoo to empty a coin box,&#8221; Vitai said at the time.<\/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\u2019s approval, it would only have payphones in a few key locations within first six months of 2018.<\/p>\n<p>This is because the company was still bound by regulations to provide the payphones as a community-service element, he said.<\/p>\n<p>In a follow-up to BusinessTech queries, a Telkom\u00a0spokesperson confirmed that as of the start of 2019 it had removed a number of payphones in terms of the prescribed regulatory process.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can however still find payphones in South Africa,&#8221; the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Payphones are still available in prisons and where a community, as part of the consultation process, expressed the need to keep the payphone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/293234\/south-africas-best-mobile-network-vodacom-vs-mtn-vs-cell-c-vs-telkom-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">South Africa\u2019s best mobile network: Vodacom vs MTN vs Cell C vs Telkom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of January 2018, Telkom said that it planned 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":295124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,65],"class_list":["post-295110","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\/295110","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=295110"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295176,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295110\/revisions\/295176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}