TeliaSonera to discontinue its payphone services

"Elisa has no plans to abandon public telephone business"

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Public payphones will gradually become history in Finland, as mobile phones have taken over the telecommunications market.
      TeliaSonera Finland announced yesterday that it would phase out its public phones by the end of April next year. The company currently has nearly 2,000 payphones.
      However, public phones will not disappear from Finland altogether, as rival operator Elisa plans to continue its public phone business for the time being. According to Elisa, pay phones are still in demand in shopping centres, hospitals, airports, and prisons.
     
During the peak years in the mid-1990s, the payphone business comprised around 2% of the company's turnover, recalls Juhani Tapiola, the director of the payphone unit at TeliaSonera Finland.
      Last year the net sales of the payphone business were a modest EUR 1.3 million, and the unit barely made a profit.
     
According to Tapiola, public phones are mainly used by tourists at present.
      "Hotels in Lapland have requested that the payphone services will be continued till the end of the winter ski season. The French visitors for example, unlike the Finns, do not always take their mobile phones abroad", Tapiola says.
     
Elisa has nearly a thousand public phones in Southern and Central Finland.
      The company will continue its payphone business until further notice.
      "There are no plans to abandon the business, because it is financially profitable", says director Mikko Noponen from Elisa.


Links:
  TeliaSonera press release

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