I was speaking to my mom about how I predict the demise of the telephone industry in the very near future. VOIP means as long as you have an Internet connection, you can call anyone for free, so you can forget about long distance bills, and perhaps forget about phone service all together. Forget about cell phones too, because many cities (including Montreal) are either planning, or have already implemented free public wireless Internet access (and by free, I mean paid for by your tax dollars). The idea is to put a wifi access point in every street lamp post, so no matter where you go in the city, you can connect to the Internet wirelessly. If you have a PDA with a microphone and speaker, there's no reason to pay for cell phone service anymore.

Anyway, I just read that Popa Global is investing in installing completely free payphones in New York.

I didn't believe it either when I saw the one at 34th St. and 10th Ave. in Manhattan, right near the Daily News. But it did say, "Free phone," so I picked up the receiver, dialed my office and - it worked. Then I dialed my sister in California. Worked again. So my next phone call was to the company behind this thing to find out: What is going on?

Ad dollars at work. The phones are embedded in brightly lit billboards that advertisers are glad to have you gaze upon while you are making your call.

I'm not sure how useful these free payphones will be, if your city already has free wifi, but maybe it'd be useful for making anonymous calls. Anyway, my favorite part of the article is when the CEO John Baily tries to justify why anyone would use these payphones when almost everyone has a cell phone.

"On any given day, 13% of cell phones are disconnected because people haven't paid their cell phone bills," contends Bailey.

I'm a bit skeptical about this figure, as it sounds a bit high.

And if I'm any indication, another 127% of cell phones are not working because no one remembered to recharge them the night before.

Okay, now that figure is definitely too high.