Mobile Phone Booth...WTF?

Mobile Phone Booth may sound like an oxymoron at first, yes? Well not in Cambodia. We're actually in Laos at the moment but I have been meaning to write about this minor part of the Cambodian city life for a while.

The ubiquitousness of mobile phones has obviously been a major factor in the now-insignificant state of public phone booths in Australia. I still recall a lot of annoying complaints from people about them not being there when people really need them- perhaps referencing their higher use among the elderly and underprivileged (or perhaps emergency needs) to gain support. Any argument on that side would quickly be dealt with by printing statistics of the number of vandalised phone booths compared to the number of calls actually made on them. Quite easy to argue that a mobile network makes the public phone booth obsolete, yes?

Cambodia has a clever way to have both. While travelling around numerous towns we saw a number of these little phone-booth like boxes (and they aren't bigger on the inside, doctor). But no phone is visible, so what are they? On closer inspection, most contain a phone number stuck on the outside, a phone charger or two and not much else. The deal is that the booth belongs to a nearby shop owner, who provides their phone at a (bartered) fee, or you can plug in a (battery-exhausted) compatible phone if you like. The shop owner gets all the proceeds from the booth, so they will ensure it is maintained. Any vandalism is cleaned up by them. Finally, the brilliance of the market economy (and not talk-back radio callers) will limit the number of these around the place, as shop-owners won't bother to have them out there if they are rarely used.