Do you remember the iconic last scene in the 2006 Bollywood comedy Phir Hera Pheri, where Baabu Bhaiya (Paresh Rawal) and Shyam (Suniel Shetty) are trying to make a phone call from a public telephone booth to Raju (Akshay Kumar), who is precariously balancing on a bridge with a mobile phone jammed in his mouth?

If you go a few years back to the 2000 film Hera Pheri, you will recall Raju making a phone call to his mother from a PCO (public call office). You might have enjoyed these comic gems, but they also subtly depict transition occurring in the Indian telecom sector at that time.

It was the period when mobile phone connectivity was beginning its ascendency and PCOs were marching towards their peak level.

According to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), the number of PCOs, which was around 6.58 lakh in 1999-2000, touched 55.50-lakh mark in 2006-07. The number of mobile subscribers in the country increased from 1.30 crore in 2002-03 to 16.51-crore mark in 2006-07.

Commonly known as ‘public telephone booths’, PCOs were the main connectivity tools for those who did not have either a landline or mobile phone at that time. It was also a period when mobile call tariffs were quite prohibitive for a common man.

Another significant development during the early 2000s was the decline of radio paging service (commonly known as a ‘pager’). The subscriber base declined from 5.78 lakh in 2001-02 to 28,000 by December2004.

Praveen V, who owned a shop in Mangaluru two decades ago, recalled that coin-operated phone booth attached to his shop was collecting anywhere between 200-250 coins of ₹1 each every day from 2002 and 2006. Customers also used to send pager messages from this booth, he said.

Peak and fall

TRAI data shows that the number of PCOs in the country reached an all-time high of 62.04 lakh in 2008-09, and it declined to 20,652 in 2023-24.

One telecom service area in the country has now already become ‘PCO-mukt’, and a few other service areas are on their way in the same direction.

TRAI’s ‘Indian Telecom Services Yearly Performance Indicators 2023-2024’ showed zero PCO in Odisha telecom service area. It had three PCOs in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, the number of PCOs was below 100 in Himachal Pradesh (5), West Bengal (13), Bihar (29), Rajasthan (51), Haryana (52), and Jammu and Kashmir (81).

 

Despite some telecom service areas still having a significant number of PCOs, the trend is unmistakable: PCOs are vanishing. Though Tamil Nadu (including Chennai) had a maximum of 4921 PCOs in 2023-24, it was 8538 PCOs a year ago. It was also one among the steepest declines during 2023-24.

Mumbai telecom service area had 3860 PCOs during 2023-24, followed by Andhra Pradesh (2205), Kerala (2153), Gujarat (1306), Maharashtra (1241), and Delhi (1097).

The ascent of mobile telephony over the years has led to the rapid decline in the number of PCOs. Praveen said the advancement in telecom technology has made mobile phones more convenient with so many technology features. That is why PCOs and pagers are now vanishing, he said.

From a mere 1.30 crore subscribers in 2002-03, the mobile base breached the100-crore mark in 2015-16. According to TRAI, the number of mobile subscribers increased to 116.54 crore in 2023-24.

It would be interesting to see if the main characters continue using the fast-vanishing PCOs, switch to mobile phones, or perhaps use some new technology altogether, if the Hera Pheri franchise comes out with a third part.

Related Topics