[mbo]

I actually investigated this exact thing (phone booths as advertising vectors) a little while ago: https://observablehq.com/@mjbo/sydney-qms-panel-public-telep...

To cut to the chase, I think local councils are really upset that Telstra has the right to put these anywhere they want.

[awesome_dude]

> To cut to the chase, I think local councils are really upset that Telstra has the right to put these anywhere they want.

Yes, as per the link I posted (which appears to predate your investigation by a number of years)

I personally think that there needs to be a middle ground - Telstra have the real estate they do for the express purpose of providing access to a public phone, and I have no objection to them adding some advertising onto those.

I do, however, find it difficult to agree to Telstra using that to justify building a much larger billboard that has little to no purpose relating to access to the public telephone network.

Melbourne does not have any advertising on its pay phones now (not that I can think of, but I am going out some time this afternoon and will double check the CBD)

[awesome_dude]

A walk up King Street showed that there were ten public phones, 2 had large screens for advertising integrated into them, 3 had other advertising on them, and the remainder had no advertising at all.

King Street isn't a main thoroughfare, just the one I happened to walk up