Telekom Increases Number of Telephone Booths

Germany's telecommunications group Deutsche Telekom said Saturday that it would increase by 10,000 the number of coin-operated telephone booths in the country to make things easier for tourists. By 2007, it plans to convert current public phone booths that only accept pre-paid cards to also accept coins. Explaining the reasoning behind the switch over, a Telekom spokesperson said, "We noticed that in the phone booths there was a very large number of foreign euro coins." He added that the German company wanted to give people the chance to pay for a phone call without having to go and buy phone cards. Of the 100,000 public telephones currently in use in Germany, about half only accept cards. "We want the ratio to be 60 to 40 in three years" in favor of the dual-operating booths, the spokesman said.