NEW YORK, NY – The first outdoor public payphone in New York City was installed in 1905. Twenty years later, the city had 25,000. By 1965, there were one million public payphones. The payphone expansion increased until 1995 when there was an estimated 2.2 million in service.
Then mobile phones became cheap and affordable and those phones were slowly removed. By the end of 2016, there were only four left, and this week, the last remaining payphone in New York City was removed.
Now, as the city continues rolling out its Wi-Fi hotspot network it has officially turned the page on the technology of the last century and moving forward in the 21st century.
Below the CBS video of the removal, you can find some photos of old payphones in New York City.
