Telia scrapping last payphones in 2015, says only used by 1% of Swedes

TeliaSonera Sweden (Telia) has confirmed it will remove the last of its public payphone kiosks in 2015. Telia backed up its decision to decommission the remaining 1,200 phone booths (down from around 44,000 in the early 1980s) by citing the results of a survey in August this year which showed 1% of Swedes (around 95,000 people) had used a payphone in the past year. In the mid-2000s Telia began installing wireless broadband routers on phone kiosk roofs to integrate them into its nationwide Wi-Fi network, but this did not slow down the decline in usage of the booths.