The future of the phone box

It is difficult to go almost anywhere in the world these days without findi ng a payphone somewhere. They have become commonplace and in many countries an essential tool for cheap speech communications. But this is only a frac tion of what a payphone or phonebox booth could provide. The same pair of w ires that carry the speech could at the same time carry many millions of bi ts of data to facilitate all sorts of additional features both in and aroun d the booth. This paper aims to look into the future of the payphone, look at what addit ional features could be added and speculate on how the concept of the payph one might change in its battle with the upcoming generation of personal por table cell-phones.