The Guadalajara Reporter

Public phone booths to give way to wi-fi hotspots?

With use of public phone booths declining in Mexico, the Federal Telecommunications Commission (Cofetel) is considering replacing them with Wi-Fi hotspots.

The number of phone booths – which are frequently vandalized and have high maintaince costs – in the country has fallen by 125,000 since peaking at 850,000 in 2006. This has led Cofetel to investigate whether it would be of greater benefit to the population to remove the booths and install Wi-Fi hotspots in their place.

The idea is modeled on a similar scheme successfully implemented in Brazil, in which customers pay a small fee to use the wireless internet for a short space of time.

The modems could be installed from 2015 to 2018, Cofetel predicts, although ultimately private companies, such as Telcel, which owns 600,000 of Mexico’s 725,000 phone booths, would be responsible for the changes in each city – not local governments.