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Telstra’s recent high-tech payphones are facing opposition from city councils, but why?
Aug
Australia is undergoing its first major phone booth makeover since 1983. But Telstra’s recent vision is being met with opposition from some councils and the case has gone to court.
To ensure public phones meet the needs of current Australians, Telstra has upgraded its public phones to include mobile charging and Wi-Fi access Telstra Air (free or through a Telstra broadband plan, depending on area) and enormous digital advertising displays.
Sydney Mayor Clover Moore Described the recent stands have been called a “cowardly attempt” to profit from “already congested CBD footpaths” and a “Trojan horse for advertising”.
Read more: Will Australia’s digital divide – speedy in cities, sluggish in the countryside – ever be bridged?
Under current Universal Service Obligation (USO) agreements, Telstra must provide payphones as part of its standard telephone service. USO is a consumer protection measure that ensures everyone has access to landlines and payphones, regardless of where they live or work. Telstra is the only provider of USO services in Australia.
The USO is financed through an industry tax administered by Australian Communications and Media AuthorityThis means registered operators with revenues of more than A$25 million a year, including Telstra, pay the tax.
The face of Australia’s recent public phone
IN blog post in March last year, a Telstra employee said the recent “intelligent telephones“We provided emergency alerts, multilingual services, and content services including public transportation, city maps, weather, travel tips, and cultural attractions.
The booths are 2.64m high, 1.09m wide and feature 75-inch LCD screens on one side. Melbourne city planners approved 40 payphones in 2016 and installed them over the next year, marking the start of Telstra’s plans for a nationwide rollout.
In a letter submitted to the City by Telstra, it was stated that the booths constituted “low environmental impact” infrastructure and therefore did not require planning consent, according to Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth).
In 2017, Telstra and outdoor advertising company JC Decaux announced a partnership to “bring the telephone box into the 21st century.”
Read more: Better public Wi-Fi in Australia? Let’s send a signal
Initially, 1,860 payphones would be upgraded in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. These five cities account for 64% of the country’s population and 77% of advertising spend.
Taking a case to court
Earlier this year, Telstra’s application to build 81 recent cabins was blocked by the City of Melbourne, with the city taking legal action in the Civil and Administrative Tribunal of Victoria to have the cabins deemed to have a low environmental impact.
Given that the council allowed 40 booths to be installed in 2017, it is unclear why its position has changed since then.
In May, Telstra responded by commencing Federal Court proceedings against the council seeking to quash the earlier proceedings. In June, Brisbane and Sydney city councils joined the City of Melbourne as co-defendants.
Melbourne councillor and planning chairman Nicholas Reece said the recent payphones would cause traffic jams on busy pavements and called them “monstrous electric billboards masquerading as payphones”.
He added that the stands were “part of Telstra’s revenue strategy”.
But Telstra Claims The recent payphones are just 15cm wider than the previous ones. A company spokesman said the extra size was necessary to accommodate fibre-optic connections and other equipment needed to run the payphone service.
Who pays for public phones and profits from them?
In 2017, the Productivity Commission conducted an inquiry into USO reported The average annual subsidy for a public telephone is between A$2,600 and A$50,000, funded by an industry levy.
But the fee does not cover the cost of installing and delivering advertising on the stands. Furthermore, Telstra’s advertising revenue does not directly cover the cost of installing and running the payphones.
Telstra has been advertising on its payphones for 30 years. But the advertising screens on the recent stands are 60% bigger than the previous one.
The City of Melbourne is concerned because commissioned research SGS Economics and Planning estimates a 10% drop in foot traffic due to the recent booths. This would happen because people would be distracted by payphone ads and cost the city A$2.1 billion in lost productivity.
Read more: Optus’s coverage apology highlights multi-network problem
Still, federal law does not prevent Telstra from advertising on payphones. So the existing court case could rest on the Melbourne City Council’s argument that by increasing the size of the digital displays, Telstra’s recent payphones no longer have a low impact.
The results should be known early next year.
Do we still need public phones?
At a time when consumers and businesses are using approximately 24.3 million mobile phonesOne may wonder whether public telephones are still necessary.
The number of payphones in operation today is significantly lower than during their heyday in the early 1990s, when there were more than 80,000 across Australia.
However, there is sturdy evidence that they continue to provide a vital public service.
georgiesharp/flickr
Telstra currently provides over 16,000 public payphones. Last year, they were used to make around 13 million calls, including around 200,000 emergency calls to 000.
Regardless of the Telstra ruling, public payphones are and will remain an integral part of our telecommunications landscape.
