"Am heutigen Donnerstag, 28. November, wurde in Baden die letzte Schweizer Telefonkabine abmontiert."

Translates to "Today Thursday November 28 (2019) the last payphone in Switzerland was disconnected."

The cool thing with these payphones was that they had their own publicly available number so you could call them. Something I had not seen in other countries.

Source: https://www.nzz.ch/panorama/kein-anschluss-unter-dieser-numm...

way back in the day, it use to be a thing to hang out at payphones. your friends could call you there.

This comment prompted me to google. Apparently there are still 100000 pay phones still in operation in the US. In Sweden we have none left.

I was surprised there are so many of them in US, at least when I was in California. But that's also probably because there was little or no cell phone coverage outside of the cities where we went. Most countries in EU have an almost complete cell network coverage including remote areas.

In cities such as New York the payphones are not really used for placing calls. Their primary function is as a substrate for advertising. No amount of money can buy ad space in some of the best payphone locations.

In New York, most of the pay phones have been replaced with "LinkNYC" kiosks, which provide free WiFi, charging, tourist info, and yes... actual phone calls.

(As well as still providing advertising space. Always with the advertising.)

In other words, they provide basecamps for panhandlers.

Installations up and down 7th Ave or Broadway, for instance, are typically abutted by a kind of cardboard picnic blanket spread, covered with makeshift bags of belongings along with the pan handler’s signage and pan.

The mendicant roosts there with tablet and phone plugged in for juice, watching YouTube played over the WiFi.

Some stores have taken to piling the day’s trash bags around the base instead, before someone posts up.

I’m curious who thought these wouldn’t turn out co-opted by panhandlers camping or as a pole to pile refuse around — I’m not sure which setup is a less appetizing context for advertising!

and urinals...

and for drunks to beat on. There use to be a handful in an art/music neighborhood here in Dallas (Deep Ellum) and they were always bent and beat to hell.

"Remote" means something very different in West Texas, Montana, and many other places in the U.S. than it does basically anywhere in Europe.