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@otte_homan @emmadavidson @futurebird The government has a fee on all telephony carriers for the maintenance of the public phones. The staff of the carrier which runs those phone, Telstra, see them as very worthwhile and they have a high informal priority within the field organisation.
Removing the cost to make a call removed the cash from the phones, and that cut back vandalism.
@futurebird Suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. All three.
But given that wireless charging is a feature reserved for high end phones, not sure how useful that is. Local government clearly isn't going to put 240V power on a socket in the street, so their choices are limited. Of course the free local library has power outlets for phone charging.
The info screens are really for beach conditions. We do have other alerting systems run by state (app and road signs) and federal government (SMS). No government is going to push out bushfire information to info screens, they want information direct to people on a phone where people can see a map and extended advice. Even when the radio reads a bushfire notice (twice) the full notice can take several minutes for a big fire.