This research addresses the problem of a concessionary of telecommunications that in compliance to regulations has to maintain a low profitability system of public telephones and proposes a low cost and flexible methodology to increase the profitability of the business. The problem presents similarity with the classic maximum coverage location problem of Church and ReVelle and a bibliographic search revealed models that could be adapted for solution. Nonetheless, practical details render a mathematical programming approach inadequate. For this reason, a more flexible methodology was developed capable of incorporating the tacit knowledge accumulated by the technical staff. This methodology combines economic and geographic analyses of the public telephones installed in an urban area. The economic analysis indicates the public phones eligible for removal, and the geographic analysis points out the ones that can actually be removed without violating the rules set by the regulatory agency. The geographic analysis uses an efficient geographic information system readily available in the market. The results indicate that by removing the low profitability phones the total profitability can be considerably improved. Moreover, it is believed that due to its flexibility, the methodology is applicable to any urban area, being capable of taking into account the peculiarities of each case.