The stream of workers who strode down the walkway Monday afternoon at the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park 
seemed too glued to their cell phones to notice the two payphones they passed. Not that it mattered: Neither phone worked.
The black plastic receiver of one phone’s handset was cracked, and two plastic wires protruded from it. A short walk away, a phone in front of the deli Ample Hamper was gathering dust, as were three phones along Waterfront Drive.
This reporter got strange looks and a laugh or two when he asked bystanders to direct him to the nearest payphone.
None of the seven phones found on a recent walk through Road Town worked — not even the one in front of a building on Main Street occupied by LIME, which operates the territory’s payphones.
Sean Auguste, the CEO of LIME’s Virgin Islands operation, said in a recent interview that his company is still trying to decide what to do with the territory’s aging public phones.
“Should we invest in replacing all of the payphones in the BVI? The question is do we really need to? When we didn’t have mobile technology in the BVI, one could see the need to,” he said.
As an alternative to removing the phones entirely, the CEO added, the company is considering whether to “evolve” them into stations to provide wireless Internet access.
See the Aug. 30, 2012 edition for full coverage.
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