Number's up for Galway’s payphones
It’s the end of the line for 33% of Galway’s public payphones.
Eircom, which owns the network of public payphones across the city and county, has confirmed that the ‘number is up’ for one third of Galway’s street pay-phones.
The company has confirmed to the Connacht Tribune that some 27 of the existing 79 payphones will be decommissioned this year, with the bulk of them being removed in the city.
Eircom said that of the 31 pay-phones in the city, 21 will be ‘recovered’. It said that of the 48 payphones in the county, six will be removed.
Just one was taken off the streets of Galway last year, the company said.
The company said it would not give an outline of the locations in Galway where payphones will remain in place in order to, “minimise the risk of payphone thefts”.
It did, however, list the locations of payphones in Galway which were to be removed by the end of March this year.
In the city, they included the payphones at Shantalla Road, Cathedral Square, University Road, Headford Road, St Augustine Street, Bridge Street, Eyre Square, Thomas Hynes Road, and Dublin Road in Renmore.
In the county, they included the payphones at Bridge Street, Loughrea; Main Street, Kinvara; Barrack Street in Dunmore, and Market Street in Clifden.
At some of the locations, there are multiple phones which will be removed.
Not all of the phones had been removed by the deadline.
The company said that the payphones are being removed due to an “absence of reasonable need”, a definition which is decided by the telecoms regulator ComReg. The absence of reasonable need is “usage based”, Eircom said, “indicating a lack of use”.
The decline in usage of payphones comes as mobile phone usage has soared in the past decade.
In 2013, Eircom complained that its national network of payphones was costing €100,000 a year to run, and the vast majority of its payphones were not profitable.
ComReg said payphones provide a vital service to society, particularly to vulnerable. Payphones are often used in emergencies – some 1,800 emergency calls a month were made via payphones in 2013.
It said that many Irish people also use payphones for privacy, rather than there not being an alternative; and a large percentage of calls from payphones are to helplines.