THUNDER BAY — The popularity of cell phones has brought the era of the payphone to an end in Thunder Bay.
Tbaytel decommissioned its last payphone in the city Wednesday at 32 Court Street North near the Heart of the Harbour parkade.
At one point, the company had about 800 phone booths scattered around the city.
Because of declining usage, by January of this year, fewer than 200 remained in service.
Even the busiest payphones were seeing an average usage rate of just once every five days, and some hadn't been used for two years or more.
The cost of maintaining and upgrading coin-operated or credit-card operated phones has stopped making business sense for phone companies everywhere.
Tbaytel recently donated two decommisioned pay phones — a Millenium model and a Centurion model — to the Thunder Bay Museum.
On its Facebook page, the museum stated "In the future, these payphones will help us tell local business stories, like that of Tbaytel, and more national narratives about technology and telecommunication."
