Linz becomes a pioneer: Telephone booths are transformed into mini packaging stations!

Linz becomes a pioneer: Telephone booths are transformed into mini packaging stations!

In Upper Austria, an innovative change is moving into the historical telephone booths: From the current year, 20 locations in Linz will be converted into mini packaging stations in order to cover the growing need for parcel services. There are still around 950 telephone booths in Upper Austria, but only 70,000 reception boxes are widespread, since many people under the age of 30 are hardly familiar with the old technology. The decline is dramatic: In the past two years, around 30 percent of these once so important means of communication disappeared, and the Telecommunications Act of 2021 has taken on Telekom to offer a nationwide network of telephone booths, such as Oe24.at reported.

The conversion of the telephone booths

With the aim of converting around 1,000 telephone booths in parcel stations by 2028, the post office in Linz and the Gänserndorf district starts with pilot projects. Popular locations for the renovation include Hessenplatz, Alteberger Strasse and the south of Linz. This initiative aims to better use the built cells and at the same time to meet the needs of modern society, as linza.at emphasizes. While the past decades have been shaped by a decline in telephone booths, they could get an essential role in emergency care in times of crisis by means of their equipment with emergency numbers.

A1 has already started to use some of these cells for various purposes such as the provision of defibrillators, book exchange boxes or even as electricity stations for electric vehicles. In this way, these historical relics get a second life and still remain part of our everyday life.