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SYDNEY - Mobile phones may be ringing a slow death knell for the payphone but Telstra is hoping a marriage between two ageing technologies can extend its lease on life.
The telco and ANZ have announced a partnership that could help financially prop up some of the nation's less profitable payphones.
The two companies will pilot a co-branded kiosk, which features an ANZ automatic teller machine (ATM) on one side and a Telstra payphone on the other.
Although the concept is less than cutting edge from a technological perspective, Telstra believes the union will lift the payphone's relevance in the changing world of communications.
Telstra's customer sales and service director, John Rolland, said while there would always be a market for payphones, financially justifying the existence of many phones was becoming harder.
"The bottom line is mobile phones have dramatically impacted the amount of usage for pay phones," Mr Rolland said.
"We then have some pay phones that are uneconomic for us and this broadening of the context of it allows us to maintain those pay phones in the community.
"If we were just relying on the coin revenue, some of those would be marginal."
Telstra has some 32,000 payphones across Australia.
It has also used its payphones in Sydney and Melbourne to grow its network of wireless internet hotspots.
Telstra and ANZ will trial the ATM-payphones at five busy pedestrian areas in Melbourne for six months.
The first such booth was launched in Centre Road, Bentleigh, in Melbourne's southeast.
ANZ director of consumer finance Jenny Fagg said the service was the first of its kind in Australia and was modelled on successful multi-functional payphone kiosks in Britain.
"We approached Telstra with the concept and we have worked closely together over the past two years to bring this concept to reality," Ms Fagg said.
"We want to provide our customers more convenient banking services by continuing to expand our branch and ATM network."
- AAP
