The disappearing pay phone.

Once upon a time - and not very long ago - a familiar sight in every city and town was the public telephone.

In those times not every home had a landline phone and it was well before the mobile phone was anything more than an idea in a Dick Tracey comic strip.

The pay phone is on the way to becoming a rarity. Because of the huge expansion of private mobile phones patronage has decreased to the point that they are no longer a profit earner for Telstra - and in fact because of vandalism they make huge losses for their owner.

Telstra is a publicly owned company and it has an obligation to make a profit for it's shareholders. It makes good business sense to withdraw a service that is no longer commercially viable.

The problem is that the pay phone is still needed. Not everyone has a mobile phone - and even those that do sometimes find they are out of credit when they need to phone home to arrange to be picked-up.

The pay phone is also often the only means of communication to summons the ambulance, police or the fire brigade in the event of an emergency.

Times change. Desperate people begging a coin from strangers to use a pay phone are now replaced by people begging to be allowed to use a stranger's mobile phone. At accident scenes, people of goodwill often offer their mobile to let a victim make contact with their family.

It seems inevitable that pay phones will eventually disappear from the majority of locations. This will only increase the number of children issued a mobile by anxious parents and add to the number who keep an otherwise unused mobile in the glove box of their car - just in case it breaks down in a remote spot and they need to call for help.

There was something reassuring about that pay phone on the corner - a point of contact of last resort for many. As they diminish the need to own a mobile phone for safety's sake increases exponentially - and the familiar cabinet with a plastic Telstra sign on top fades into urban myth !