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HALIFAX — Bell Aliant is doubling the cost for pay phones in all four Atlantic provinces on Monday, bringing the region in line with the rest of the country.

Company spokeswoman Isabelle Boulet said in an email Sunday that the change — from 25 cents to 50 cents — is the first pay phone price increase in Atlantic Canada in more than 20 years, and that all other regions in the country have been paying the higher price since 2009.

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She did not disclose the costs associated with keeping a pay phone running.

As more and more people abandon glass booths and metal buttons in favour of touch screens and SIM cards, the future of pay phones in Canada is looking grim, despite the price hike in the Atlantic provinces.

According to the 2017 Communications Monitoring Report from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the number of pay phones in Canada dropped by almost 40 per cent in four years — from nearly 94,000 phones in 2012 to about 57,000 in 2016.