Mobile Phones Are Killing Beijing’s Public Phones and Info Kiosks

This emo photo of a digital info kiosk is courtesy of Sina Tech

The rise of mobile phones — smartphones especially — has meant that people now walk around China’s capital with information and phone service at their fingertips. That’s great! But it hasn’t been great for Beijing’s public phones and digital info kiosks, many of which have fallen into disrepair and are “serving the people” as de facto public restrooms and trash heaps.

Mobile phones are a major factor, but they aren’t the only problem. Phone booths paid for with IC cards have been more or less ignored as fewer and fewer people have IC cards to use. The phones that can be paid for with public transportation cards have obviously seen less use too as more people carry mobile phones, but the ubiquitousness of public transit cards has meant that they continue to see use.

The digital info kiosks, too, have suffered from being replaced by smartphones, but another problem is that the equipment in many of them is old, damaged, and generally not maintained or updated enough to be particularly useful (except as a bathroom for the shameless and the desperate). Beijing does plan to update these booths over the coming year, tearing out some and refitting others with newer hardware and software, but the specifics of the changes haven’t yet been ironed out. It’s also possible some will be converted to wifi hotspots, as suggested earlier this year.

My cohort Steven suggests that some of these things ought to be replaced with recharge kiosks where people can pay into their phones (most mobile phones in China are pay-as-you go). If those kiosks covered all the major telecom providers that would actually be really useful. Unlike an IC card phone booth.

[Beijing Morning Post via Sina Tech]