Where have all the pay-phones gone?

I was at the airport yesterday and I noticed something different.

In these two photos you see a lot of shiny metal plates on the walls. Each of these plates covers where a pay phone used to be. Where there used to be about 20 pay phones there are now three pay phones, on wheelchair accessible, one TDD and one regular.



There is also a single phone card vending machine, and the white courtesy phones remain. This is all because of the advent of the cell phone. I can remember how these phone lobbies used to be so crowded and noisy. You'd have to stand patiently in line, and make sure you had a pocket full of quarters (or Thatchers in the UK). When I have my cell phone with me I think it's a good thing, but seeing these empty slots makes me think my cell phone is now essential. I wonder how many telephone engineers now work maintaining cell sites and microwave backbones, and how many used to work fixing land line pay phones and copper infrastructure.

As a point of interest, the photos were taken on my cell phone. I could even have posted this blog right there on the spot from my cell phone. If I had stood there trying to tell my thoughts to a passerby they would have thought me a loony, but if I blog it to thousands I'm sane?