Workers film the latest payphone in New York City near Seventh Avenue and 50th Street in downtown Manhattan, New York, May 23, 2022.
Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images
This is the end of an era: on Monday New York removed its last public payphone.
Frame enclosures were once an iconic symbol throughout the city. But the rise of mobile phones has made booths obsolete.
Efforts to replace public payphones across the city began in 2014 when the de Blasio administration requested proposals to revise the proposal, according to a press release from the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation.
Officials have chosen CityBridge to design and operate LinkNYC kiosks that offer services such as free phone calls, Wi-Fi and charging devices. In 2015, the city began removing street payphones to replace them with LinkNYC kiosks.
According to the LinkNYC map, there are nearly 2,000 kiosks across the city.
“Just as we have moved from horse and buggy to car and from car to plane, digital evolution has shifted from payphones to high-speed Wi-Fi kiosks to meet the needs of our rapidly changing daily communication needs,” the commissioner said. Matthew Fraser said in a release.
The latest public payphone will be on display at the New York City Museum as part of an exhibition that looks back on city life to computers.
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