New York City testing out high-tech phone booths featuring touchscreens, no phones

While the cost of using a pay phone is going up in Canada, some of our neighbours to the south are looking for ways to replace them altogether.

New York City is rolling out 32-inch "smart screens" for 250 phone booths in the city, Fox News reports. These touchscreens will replace the pay phones with a digital display of information on the neighbourhood like local restaurants, stores, landmarks and traffic information. Users can also press an on-screen button to contact 311, which will let them file complaints or get city information online.

Eventually, the screens will be equipped so New Yorkers can make Skype calls, check email and surf via WiFi, although the web capabilities of the screens will be highly controlled (hopefully, they'll be better protected than these digital bus ads in Toronto).

Unlike the increasingly-costly Canadian pay phones, it will be free to use these smart screens. The cost of the service will be covered by ad revenue. After the pilot program, New York City will get a 36 per cent cut, but it's unclear how this will compare to the approximate $18 million the city earns each year from the current pay phones.

For those who are uncomfortable with sharing the germs of all residents and tourists of New York City, the company installing the smart screens insists that they'll be cleaned regularly and will be more sanitary than an ATM.

"They're built to be cleaned with a jet hose," said City24x7 CEO Tom Touchet to Fox News. "They're waterproof and dust-proof."

Eventually, the city aims to replace all 12,800 outdoor pay phones with these new smart screens, depending on how the pilot project goes. That won't happen until at least October 2014, though, when the current pay phone franchise contract expires.

(Getty photo)