At kiosks across the city, only a third of the phones worked – but all the attached advertising billboards did

Dotted around Dublin city are 23 phone kiosks, owned by Eir, which replaced old-style phone boxes back in 2021.

They pop up from the concrete footpaths like great big digital slabs in Cabra, Capel Street, Clontarf, Merrion Road, and Ballyfermot, among other locations.

On one side of these kiosks there is an information touch screen and a pay phone.

The other side is dedicated entirely to a large digital billboard.

The advertising function of the kiosks is managed by Bauer Media Outdoor, which counts them as part of the 150-plus “roadside digital screens” around the country that they offer to potential customers on their website.

Surveying each of the 23 kiosks this week, the phone was working on just eight of them – a third of the total.

The digital advertising billboards, however, are fully-functional on all of the 23 kiosks.

“They're simply using them for advertising. It’s an absolute disgrace, is what it is,” says Mannix Flynn, an independent councillor, “because it's not regulated in any way”.

“You simply cannot just say you're putting out a phone when really what you're actually doing is you're putting out a massive advertising board,” Flynn said, “and only you can do that because you've got the monopoly because you're a telecommunications company.”

A spokesperson for Eir said on Thursday that the company has plans to upgrade the phones.

Neither Eir nor Bauer Media Outdoor responded when asked how much money these phone kiosks generate in advertising revenue, or where that money goes.

End of universal service obligation

In December 2020, the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) decided that there was no longer a need for a public payphone “universal service obligation”.

Universal service, according to ComReg is a “safety net to ensure that a set of at least the minimum services is available to all end-users and at an affordable price, where the risk of social exclusion arising from the lack of such access prevents citizens from full social and economic participation in society”.

Previously, the commission’s position had been that public payphones were relied upon by disadvantaged and vulnerable consumers, so if they were used a certain amount, they had to be kept.

The change means that whether a phone box is installed or not is now left entirely up to the company, and the the planning process.

And it’s through the planning process that Eir secured their phone kiosks.

Or, as described on the applications: “A new telephone kiosk with an integral communication unit and a 1.53sq. metre digital advertising display.”

“These digital kiosks were introduced to provide a public communications and information service across Dublin and are currently being upgraded to a new SIM-based platform,” a spokesperson for Eir said on Thursday.

“The upgrade will improve reliability and provide free calls to Irish landlines and mobile numbers for up to 15 minutes per call,” they said.

Any kiosks not working properly are being reviewed and upgraded as part of this programme, they said.

Since January 2022, more than 25,000 calls have been made from Dublin kiosks, the spokesperson said.  

Of them, 61 percent were to emergency or Freefone numbers, they said.

That works out at less than one phone call made a day per kiosk.

However, the spokesperson added that the public information touchscreens have been used almost 74,000 times – “demonstrating the ongoing value of the service”.

Frustration

In 2021, Damian O’Farrell, then an independent councillor, raised his frustration over how the advertising-phone kiosks came to be installed.  

Council planners looked at most of the applications primarily as outdoor advertising, but they should have been assessed as what the council calls “street furniture”, O'Farrell said at the time.

If the planners had assessed them as street furniture they would have looked at how they contribute to clutter, he said.

It’s the clutter that still irks David Donovan, a city centre resident. “That is the definition of just shite street architecture.”

“Why are the ad boards working and the phone isn't? At least live up to your responsibilities,” Donovan says.

He points to the kiosk on Mary Street, the phone function of which is currently broken, as a particular inconvenience for footpath users.

“There is about 12 inches to one side of it, then the curb, then the street, and on the other side of it, there's maybe three feet,” he says. “You're not getting past that if you’re in a wheelchair.”

Nobody has an issue with providing access to telephones in the city, but without the advertising panels, says Flynn, the independent councillor.

“This whole issue of advertising in the public realm with digital advertising is a serious matter and needs to be robustly dealt with," he says.

Any “loopholes” need to be closed off so that companies can't get away with it, says Flynn. “Because there's massive money to be made off of advertising on a public street.”

“It’s another clutter on the footpath that we don't need in a packed city where you have up to 75 people going on a walking tour,” he says. “What space do you have?”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.