Immigrants revive payphones

IMMIGRANTS living in Ireland are rescuing the humble public payphone from near redundancy, according to a new survey.

With the influx of mobiles in the last decade expected to wipe out call boxes, telecommunications giant Eircom said between 120,000 and 150,000 international calls were being made every month.

A survey of calls from payphones in October showed that Poland was the number one destination.

Polish immigrants are by far the biggest users, making three times more calls than callers to the Czech Republic, five times the number made to Romania and 10 times the amount to Latvia and Lithuania.

The survey revealed that 129 countries around the world received calls in October, while the busiest phonebox in Ireland was in Dingle, Co Kerry.

Ken O’Byrne, Eircom head of cards and payphones, said: “Dublin one, two and six are going to be top of the pile always, just because we have half the payphones based in the city of Dublin.”

“But Kerry is right up there. One of the busiest payphones in the country is Dingle.”

The number of payphones in Ireland was 11,000 a decade ago, but this has dropped to 8,500.

But Eircom is doing its best to repay the faith of Polish and eastern European immigrants in the trusty landline.

In a display of festive spirit, all international calls on Eircom landline payphones from Christmas Eve will cost a flat rate of 25c per minute. The offer will run to January 31, 2006.

The company is also hoping to stave off phone box redundancy by turning them into Wi-Fi hotspots, allowing laptop users an easier way to connect to the internet.