Telephone booths: By when should they be dismantled?

Telekom plans
Between nostalgia and uselessness: telephone booths in Germany are falling into disrepair – it will take a while until they are dismantled

They are in pedestrian zones, at train stations or in market squares – and are now completely useless. Since Deutsche Telekom decommissioned its telephone booths in January of last year, the last remaining ones have become even more noticeable.

They stand there, smeared, damaged and covered, like skeletons from prehistoric times. Sometimes they are just ugly, and in the worst case they are dangerous, for example when broken windows shatter. But now they really should disappear from the landscape – even if dismantling is progressing slowly. He shows how Germany deals with technical changes. Nostalgic and above all: slow.

Telephone booths as bestsellers

There were once 160,000 of the formerly yellow and later gray public telephones in Germany. With the advent of cell phones, there have been fewer and fewer of them over the past few decades. After the legal obligation to set up telephone booths no longer applied and they no longer made a profit due to a lack of users, Deutsche Telekom decided to shut them down. At the end of 2022, there were still 12,000 public telephones, most of which no longer have anything to do with the massive booths of earlier days – they are often just simple metal pillars. Perhaps the last conversation in a telephone booth in Germany took place on January 30, 2023 star-Reporter Lukas Hildebrand.

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Not only the authorities, but also the population found it difficult to finally let go of the cells. With the help of the sight of them, many people dream of a “back in the day” when everything was supposedly better. At least, according to Telekom, the yellow boxes turned out to be a bestseller after they were dismantled. And even for the silver pillars there are still “long waiting lists” for buyers, according to Telekom. New prospective buyers can no longer be accepted. But if you dream of a telephone booth, you can find it on internet portals. Dealers here charge several hundred euros up to almost 3,000 euros for an old telephone booth.

All should be dismantled by 2025

However, buyers who are still waiting for their cell to be dismantled could be in for a nasty surprise. They continue to defy wind and weather and are largely left to their own devices: “Damage that endangers road safety will continue to be repaired,” says a Telekom spokesman star-Inquiry with. Only: “However, the maintenance measures are limited to what is necessary.”

In many places, dismantling has not even started yet. And where it began, there are sometimes complications: The “Hamburger Abendblatt” recently reported that before the telephone columns can be dismantled, the underground must first be probed for weapons of war. According to Telekom, the dismantling is taking place nationwide, “step by step,” says the company spokesman. “However, many different trades are required for dismantling. Many people are involved in dismantling, from regional energy suppliers to building authorities, construction companies and recycling companies.” The group currently assumes that the last telephone booth or telephone column will have disappeared in 2025.

If you want to see a telephone booth, you have to go to the museum: 50 are on display in the Museum for Communication Frankfurt, in Frankfurt am Main.

Sources: Deutsche Telekom, “Hamburger Abendblatt”, Museum of Communication Frankfurt