NTT drops their tacky IC card public pay phones, duh yah...

[Taro Toporific]

NTT to phase out IC card-capable public pay phones
japantoday > technology, Friday, January 21, 2005 at 07:10 JST
TOKYO --- NTT East Corp and NTT West Corp said Thursday they will phase out 50,000 public pay telephones equipped to accept IC-imbedded phone cards by March 31 next year....

[Charles]

Jeez, didn't these phones just appear around '98 or 99? I bet there are green phones around that are 3 or 4 times that age, at least.
I think one of the big reasons these phones are obsolete is not just the IC cards, but the IRDA port on the front. They were intended for people with PDAs to connect to the phone through infrared. IRDA is pretty much dead nowadays.

[FG Lurker]

They never promoted the phones, and they didn't implement them in any sort of intelligent way -- no plan to transition from the old phones, and no phasing out of the old cards.

I think IC card phones were something NTT had planned before cell phones took off here. The rise of cell phones killed the problem NTT was hoping the IC phones would help with -- fake phone cards.