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Is the Payphone Dead?
m_evanchik asks: "The Net Economy has an article about phonebooths serving double duty as cell-phone antenna stations. I hate to see pay phones disappear and this sounds like a nice way to keep 'em alive a little longer. Heck, hacking pay phones is where it all started for the likes of Cap'n crunch. Is the pay phone a dying breed, still a necessity, or do we need more hacks like these to keep 'em alive? I say keep 'em around just for nostalgia's sake." While cellular and wireless technologies are making massive strives, personally I think it's too early to call for the end of the payphone. Heck, even with PCS, I still get dropped calls and, in more circumstances that I'd care to admit, I'm just plain unable to dial out from certain areas. This is not a problem with payphones. I'm especially grateful for the ones you find in your out-of-the-way places, like your average subway station. How do the rest of you feel?
And besides, where would Clark Kent change into his Superman uniform?
What's that you say? There haven't been any phone booths since when? Oh, nevermind, I'll just go back to sleep now.
would be like getting rid of fire hydrants - you might just need them in an emergency. Can you imagine not being able to get a signal on your mobile when the deer in your backseat is kicking you, and you need a 'ambylance?
i have found that phones without callback are a minority
Just 2 weeks ago my dad called my cellphone from the LA airport. after hanging up i realized i would be late picking him up so i dialed the number which was stored in my phone (it did not come up as "unidentified caller" or "number not available") and he picked up.
back in the day, when my friends all had pagers not cellphones, we used to page eachother to payphones all the time. and yes, it was for illegal purposes....
It's called D.C.
I'm in the military and on the base that i'm at you can make free long distance phone calls at all the bellsouth payphones on base, it doesn't work on the AT&T payphones though.
The quick version is that you pick up the phone, wait for the dialtone, tap the hangup button, wait for the tone to come back, tap it again, wait for the tone, and continue until the tone doesn't come back, dial 18005555555, then wait, about a minute, and eventually you hear a dialtone. Call any number you want!
Its perfectly reliable on base, but I haven't had any luck getting it to work anywhere else, although some people say that they have.
I have no idea why it works, but its pretty awesome. It would definately be ashame if they were to get rid of the payphones on here.
Otherwise, what would happen to the people like those at the Payphone Project? Their site is truly amusing.
Their comments section is worth taking a look at too. I've posted links to one story there in particular on Slashdot in the past because it's hilarious:
Pay Phone Event #1, Atlantic City, 1977
In sweden all payphones are to be removed within a few years (according to the teleco) because their usage has dropped so much the maintance costs is higher than the earings they cash in (thanks to the cellular phones)
It was snowing. Heavy.
Quite useful, those payphones. But if we shrink the payphone tech to put in a cellphone transceiver, we can reuse the space. Worth it!
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Well, I don't know about the true poor (that is no money at all), but my expirence is low income folks are more likely to have a cell phone. When you are at the same location a wired phone is cheap and works. When your up in a tree picking fruit one week, and the next berries in anouther town, a cell phone is the only option. When your a carpenter making $12/hour you can't be reach any other way, and probably need a phone often to call for more supplies. (Generally you are not paid for using your personal phone for work either)
Those working at McDonalds might not be able to afford a cell phone, but few people work there who have other options, which generally means out of high school)
That depends on the phone. All national no roaming phones (in the US) have an analog mode, and very few parts of the Us are not covered by analog. Sure the quality sucks (because the tower is miles away), but there is service. Well, at least along freeways there is service. You see cell phone companies know that travelers are a major source of income, and travelers only get off the main roads to get gas or a meal, so they cheap, towers to cover the freeway and however far out the tower happens to reach. Drive a back road and there is no service, but if you drive a back road you should be equipped to get out anyway.
Good, that frees up the cell towers for the rest of us to use. I think more people should discover the freedom and independence of not having a cellular phone. I mean, there's nothing I like more when it's 10 degree below zero and my car dies than to take a brisk 5 mile walk to the local payphone. Ahh, such independence invigorates me. :-)
For all the evils of the ATT/Bell monopoly, it did subsidize necessary but unprofitable services like pay phones and hard to service local lines with the profits from more lucrative and voluntary things like long distance.
I wouldn't worry for too much longer. With the recent telecommunications mergers in the last 5 years we should be back to the AT&T/Bell monopoly in oh... about 3 years now. Has Verizon announced merger talks with SBC yet? I'll put my bet on sometime next year. Then who is left.. hmm.. Qwest? Oh oh I forgot. SBC has to merge with Worldcom first. Then Sprint will merge with Qwest. Then Qwest will merge with Verizon. Then Verizon will merge with SBC, then SBC will merge with AT&T. It's like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon! How far are we from an AT&T monopoly again! hehe.
Here in the city I live in, pay phones were removed because it was alleged that all they do is draw drug dealers and prostitutes.
The people in the city should be careful of that sort of reasoning! Compare the number of times you've seen hookers or dealers hanging out on a corner in the city vs. a rural area.
Conclusion: cities attract crime! Demolish them immediatly!!!
Soon, the only place you'll see a payphone is in a Sharper Image store, next to the Wurlitzer jukebox and antique Coke machine. Yuppies will buy 'em to decorate their homes.
Maybe they'll be replaced by those suicide booths like on Futurama
You mean you'll put down your rock, and I'll put down my sword and we'll try and kill each other like civilized peo
My opinion, but anonymity is a right, not just a necessity. I do agreee with your point.
You mean you'll put down your rock, and I'll put down my sword and we'll try and kill each other like civilized peo
Wireless phones aren't much use in rural and uninhabited areas. Not only would you be pissed at yourself for forgetting to buy gas before attempting to drive across a desert, but also for blowing some $30-$40/mo a phone that keeps telling you "no service" instead of completing your call for help. There's also not much of an argument for having an emergency use only wireless phone in populated areas since there's always a payphone or a business within walking distance that you can visit and call for a tow.
Unless you want to make and receive calls when you're travelling, there's no good reason to have a wireless phone. I don't have one precicely because I don't like to be bothered when I'm driving and any calls I might want to make can wait until I reach my destination.
I never use pay phones (maybe you guys should start using AT&T+Nokia - my phone always works) and I think we all know who paid for that ten-cent increase in the price of pay phones. It sure wasn't we loyal mobile users. I'm sorry, but I have always had this creeping feeling that pay phones were only there to gouge the poor.
-- Eli Juicy Jones
Of corse not! It just means I won't drive a SUV or Buick!
We have almost no payphones in Finland and almost (except for kids and the elderly) everyone has a cellphone (over 2 million sold phones in a country of 5 million). The local companies responsible for the public phones took them away after the upkeep topped the earnings.
And as for being able to call in the subway that Cliff was complaining about, there _are_ solutions to that. At least here I can make a call without any glitches even when inside the train and in the tunnel.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
not everyone WANTS to have one either. Someone said in an earlier post that the city said they attract prostitutes and drug dealers.. I believe that drug dealers use wireless more often than not..
;-)
I find a ringing phone annoying, a ringing payphone even more annoying, but a ringing cell phone is my pet peeve. If you are one of those assholes that leaves it on during class and it goes off just b/c your friend is driving to another class and is too impatient to wait till afterwards to talk to you, then you deserve to go the way that payphones may go!
you are most definitely my new hero.
i love walking by a ringing payphone and answering. usually it's someone trying to figure out why someone is one the phone.
fun things to do (if male, invert if female):
if it's a man get enraged and act like other guys husband, whose wife has a travelinng job. or, if it's a woman, act gay and etc..... or just discuss coxswain
Payphones are great if you want to make a call and reduce the chance of people knowing who you are. (Like calling the cops for a domestic violence incident on your neighbors and being able to give a fake name)
Payphones are also nice when you have to make a long call and are roaming, $.75 a minute can get really pricy compared to $.05-$.10 a minute charge on my trusty AT&T pre-paid phone card. Even with connection fees a pre-paid phone card can save you a bundle (some of us still have &h!tty Analog Cell Service, THANKS VERIZON YOU SUCK)
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
Just a reminder that not everyone can afford telephone service at home, much less cell phone service. I remember when payphone prices increased from 20 cents to 35 cents (in California at least), that it was a major issue to low income families. Imagine if your telephone costs almost doubled overnight?
I am not sure where I read this; but I remember 4 years ago reading an article about how phone companies were taking pay phones out of a lot of areas and not putting pay phones in where people were requesting. The writer, if he did research or not I will never know, wrote that they were removing the phones and not putting new ones to force people to buy cell phones--which they obviously make more money off of due to the money fee.
My philosophy was always; why get a cell phone when a pay phone is always a few feet away, but it seems like lately when I look for a pay phone they are never around when I need one so I had to break down and get a cell phone. I pay some 40 dollars a month with about 8 of that going to some kind of taxes or another and I use maybe 100 minutes of my 500 minutes. It seems like if their plan was to get more people to buy cell phones by taking out the pay phones it worked here.
--MD--
--MD--
Hey, now that we've all got great benefits packages, let's get rid of public health clinics. And since our kids are all living off of the largesse of our absurdly high family incomes, let's can the school lunch program. Heck, let's just bulldoze all those poor neighborhoods now that no one lives in them anymore.
Oh wait -- you mean we're not the majority, just an insular clique of tech specialists? Whoooaaaa, heavy man.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What anonymity? All those calls are logged. And pay phones that are suspect for drug use are often wiretapped legally for a suspect. But your calls are innocently recorded also. (-;
This is not a rumor, but some cell site techs wont fix sites at night. So if your mobile base station is down in east LA, its staying down till the next business day.
Dont forget, good credit gets you 10 cents a minute, poor or no credit gets you a pre-paid phone with 35 cents a minute. So even if phones are free, the minutes will cost more for lower income brackets, thus keeping cell phones out of lower income urban areas.
You're missing the point. Some of us don't ever need to be that accessible. Why buy a phone and never turn it on?
I also don't need a cellphone. I'm kind of a gadget freak, so I kind of WANT one, and I've been thinking about one for the last couple of years, but in all that time I've wanted a phone and wasn't near one anyway exactly once, and that was just for something stupid. From listening to people use them, I think people yak on the damn things just to justify having bought them.
I personally like being out of communications. People are bugging me all the damn time for one thing or another, you'd have to pay me a lot to make them be able to bug me when I'm finally alone in my car or shopping.
The only people that run out of gas are either careless or too poor or stupid to keep enough gas in their car. At least half of breakdowns are also a result of careless maintenance (I'm being generous here) or being too poor to keep the car in shape.
I'll get a cell phone when the phone companies admits (or the FCC forces a tariff) that airtime is cheaper than pulling and maintaining copper, and rolls the airtime into the flat rate like they do with the copper to your house. In fact they should stop maintaining copper and put battery backed digital cell transceivers on your house.
By the way, it's kind of taking advantage of the system, but if you just want one for running out of gas in the desert, do what I do. Buy a deactivated phone at a garage sale for $5 and put it under the seat. 911 always works even on deactivated phones.
Without payphones around, it will make it much more difficult for me to find a hard line out of this place....
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
This improper usage is the real symptom of the death of literacy, not the inability to spell that we see on Slashdot every day. Like the mass of people that are unaware that "I could care less" means precisely the opposite of what they're trying to say, Cliff wrote "massive strives" because it bears a phonetic resemblance to an expression he's heard before. He's a child screaming "vroom vroom" as he wiggles the steering wheel and jerks the gear shift of his mom's car. It's worse than that, because he has deluded himself into thinking that he's actually driving.
A guy in mercedes almost ran into me on the 101 because he was getting his dick sucked. That doesn't mean anyone should be anti-getting their dick sucked in a nice car, they just need to keep their eyes on the road and not their cock.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The argument of being reachable at any time is crap... if you can sit there and ignore your phone ringing at home, whats to stop you when it's vibrating/ringing in your pocket? That is what they made caller id for, and man is it handy sometimes... oh look ex-girlfriend, I think i will let my handy voicemail catch that one. And I may be mistaken and if so somebody berate me, but, I think you can get a package that is only for outgoing calls.
Hell, you can even setup groups on most cellphones now so you wouldn't even know somebody was calling unless you told it to ring for that person. I am sorry but sitting in my car in a parking lot in the middle of winter making a call is much more comfortable than standing in a phone booth looking at my nice warm car waiting for the call to be over.
You know, when you're playing with local symphony and someone's cell goes off in the audience? That gets noticed.
i think the phone companies should partner up with hotmail.com or other widely-used communications service. i know if i was walking through the city and saw a pay phone internet access station that had a screen for me to send e-mail or something, i would probably pay something like $.75/minute or something. it would be great to use to get to maps.yahoo.com, some e-mail, or other stuff like that in a pinch.
and to satisfy the topic of the original post, i would greatly increase the popularity of pay phone use.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
You could always write them a letter - if you took the necessary precautions you could still remain an AC.
So, while the USPS takes 2-4 days to deliver my mail, the suspect is out crafting an alibi or leaving the state/country.
To be honest, unless I know the victim or dislike the perpetrator the pay phone is the only medium that is convienent enough and anonymous enough to make it worth my while to report what I saw.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If I had knowledge of the details of a crime, I would only call the police from a pay phone to give them a tip. My cooperation would be predicated upon my anonymity. If they know who I am, they can question me as to how I know these details. Maybe I witnessed this crime while I was getting a hummer from the Chief's 19 year old daughter in my truck.
If I couldn't be anonymous, I'd keep my mouth shut.
If payphones are eliminated, you'll see tips to law enforcement take a steep dive.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
No one needs a computer, either. No one *needs* a great many things, but they do make many tasks more easier
Further, because you don't want people calling you doesn't have any bearing on my desire to be reachable. So you don't buy one, I do, nothing evil there. (BTW, no telemarketer has ever called my mobile)
I agree with you on opposing laws restricting the use of cell phones in cars, but I think we need to better enforce the laws we have against careless driving (here in NJ that's a specific violation, the definition of which translates to "doing something stupid while operating a vehicle).
Finally, someone with a level headded sence of view.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Look here on eBay.
We're gonna need those hard-lines for the Matrix sequels.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Buy?
:)
Just, uh, "take it in for servicing."
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
> Here in the city I live in, pay phones were removed because it was alleged that all they do is draw drug dealers and prostitutes.
And sadly, crime actually got worse, because they had unwittingly destroyed Superman's natural habitat.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Actually, that's what happened in South Korea about several years ago.
KT telecomm, the state-run telecommunition company once decided to cell short-ranged wireless phones --- the product name was "City Phone." It's similar to 900Mhz wireless phone that can be easily found in any American home, but the idea was the public phone booths serves as a base station, collecting phone call requests from the City Phone handsets nearby. The rate was cheaper than PCS or Cellulars. But City Phone handsets could not receive phone calls; it just can make calls.
KT was the only service provider of City Phone service because it was the only one public phone service provider in South Korea. KT started City Phone service with installing antennas and wireless base station in the exsisting public phone booth. I remember the service quality was fairly good: No noise, good sound quality. The rate was 3 or 4 times of that of normal phones, but the rate for PCS or cellular service was more than twice as much as that of City Phone.
City Phone business was found to be a total failiure in the end. It was mainly due to KT's strategy. KT tried to compete with PCS and Cellular services, but City Phone service was actually no match for them in spite of its cheap rate because City Phone handsets were unable to receive calls. That was a major drawback for customers. But KT continued to advertize its service being equivalent to PCS or celluar, but the strategy didn't work. All the customers finally all switched to PCS or celluar services instead of cheap City Phone.
KT now declared that it gave up the service. Now in Korea, especially in the metropolitan city of Seoul, careful people can easily find a tall antenna and a box or wireless base station attached to every phone booth. But the problem is they are not working. South Koreans were unable to come up with the idea that City Phone actually had been able to change all the public phone booths to cheap handsets.
Since more than 50% of South Korean people are now subscribers of PCS or cellular service, the current size of wireless networks or wirless base stations networks which were built by private service providers exceed the size of public phone networks. There is no reason for South Koreans to try to "utilize" the old public phone booth. But what I found out in this KT failure case is that exsisting public phone booths can serve as another kind of information service. In my personal opinion, if KT had tried to market City Phone as an alternative to public phone card, it might have been successful. Maybe South Koreans would be buying cheap personalized handsets to use public phone. Maybe the handsets might be evolving into "disposable phone" now, which was discussed in slashdot recently.
There are many kinds of things to do with exsiting public phone network. Network is important; without network, the value of individual service must remain low. My cell phone is valuable because I can make phone calls to my friend who is another subscriber of the same service or I can receive a call from him. Although the clumsy business plan of KT in Korea had ended in total failure, I really wish other countries find some better ways to utilize the existing public phone network. With some careful planning, KT and City Phone could have been successful in Korea. But alas....
I personally like being out of communications. People are bugging me all the damn time for one thing or another, you'd have to pay me a lot to make them be able to bug me when I'm finally alone in my car or shopping.
So get a phone with voice-mail or pager service. Most cell phones have them these days.
When I give people my cell-phone number, it is with the understanding that I can refuse to answer my phone at any time for any reason or no reason at all. If they don't like it, tough. Leave a nasty message in my voice-jail for me to ignore. Since my phone also has Caller-ID, I'm almost always able to make callbacks when I feel more communicative. I do this without a single shred of guilt, and so should anyone else with a cell-phone.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
I say keep 'em around just for nostalgia's sake
Yeah, I guess that's pretty easy to say if you aren't paying for them.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
It takes 3 to 4 times as many radio sites for PCS carriers to cover the same area as cellular. This is because of the higher frequencies (higher frequencies don't travel as far). That's quite a capital investment.
So these PCS ads that claim you won't drop calls must be talking about well covered major metro areas only.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
--
Dunx
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
in certain areas of my city you can always see that the pay phones have a strong following and are not leaving us anytime soon. just take a look at the areas where immigrant residence is high, and you'll see aliens (legal and illegal) using them to call their home country.
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
Plus, strangely, the cell coverage goes out frequently. Some farmer in the Yakima Valley will plow through a fiber line, and suddenly Idaho and Montana are without cell phones. I'm not kidding. A month ago we lost cell coverage for four days because a backhoe in Ballard severed a fiber line. Sheesh.
Start a pricewar on who can charge the least, and then we'll be getting somewhere.
--
Help us build a better map!
And amazingly enough, when drug users and prostitutes can't find a pay phone, they'll stop using drugs, and find a decent job. Imagine that!
Whats wrong with an Internet Cafe?? Thats pretty anonymous if you pay hard cash.
"Who wishes to be creative, must first destroy and smash accepted values." - Nietzsche
We still need more pay phones with RJ-11 jacks for modems. (Or even better, RJ-45 for ethernet!)
NB: The following was a joke.
spoo
Unfortunately, unlike comparisons between credit cards and cash, phone booths are expensive to maintain. If there isn't a critical mass using them and there's no public will to see them maintained, they'll disappear.
This, of course, is unfortunate for those unable to afford a cell phone. However, this is just part of a larger trend. When a significant segment of the population is wealthy enough to afford a service, it is soon no longer considered a "necessary" service.
Sort of like schools. Once a large enough part of the population is sending their children to private schools, there's very little public will to pay for a decent system for the few students remaining.
Then there's all the phones with screws underneath, so unless you have a screwdriver, you lose the "returned" quarter if you hang up before completing a call. Then some guy steps out of the alley and takes the screw and your quarter.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I've also had plenty of people ruin movies just because they wouldn't shut the hell up (and a few awful ones rescued by funny hecklers). And many years of driving in Boston taught me that there are more ways to cut people off than you can shake a tire iron at; cell-using drivers can't even make a dent in THAT body count.
I stay out of malls, so I never have the last problem. I just look at the mic users like they are talking to themselves.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
What about people who don't have phones in their houses, and only rarely make a long-distance call from a pay phone w/ a phone card? What about people who don't have cell phones and travel? (Like students - pay phones save our asses many times!) What about youth? What about the majority of the working class? All these people still use cell phones, especially in more populated areas.
Most importantly, where will Superman change?
The viewpoint that phone booths are dying out is crap. It illustrates a small-minded outlook on life, from someone who has never known anything other than upper-class living.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
me thinks me smells a liar.... You do realize that you can get cell reception almost anywhere in the US? Sure - it's analog, but it's there. I've never been anywhere that didn't have analog cell (not caring about the occasional hole in coverage).
We're talking in the middle of nowhere. Out in the Arizona desert, up on a mountain in Idaho, the farming areas in the midwest states (like kansas and nebraska).
And usually - those people out there have lots of cell phones. You'd be amazed how good of a signal you can get especially if you've got a 3W analog transportable beastie.
Not to mention that you're not going to find a pay phone booth in the corn field.
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
Does anyone know where I can buy a phonebooth, preferably used? It doesn't need to be operational...
-Chris
...how can you repeatedly call the 1-800-SPAMMER numbers that show up in your e-mail?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Funny scene in the Superman movie. Clark Kent runs up to a pay phone. But it's freestanding and not in a phone booth! Clark shakes his head annd goes else where...
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They generally took advantage of unsuspecting users who ended up with huge charges when making calling card calls.
"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." People soon learned to defend themselves by dialing 800 #s and using their own carrier calling cards to make calls. COCOT owners cried the blues and got the current 35/cent reimbursement for toll free calls. Many of them resorted to dirty tricks, like blocking 800-CALL-ATT for example.
I remember about 5 years ago thinking "Soon, everyone will be carrying a cell phone and these scum will all go broke and I'll be jumping for joy."
So, now I'm jumping for joy.
I do realize some people rely on pay phones on the corner since they can't afford their own, but I think those numbers are pretty slim. Cell phones are getting pretty cheap now. All pay phones have to do is charge reasonable prices and they'll be fine. I've seen one near here that advertises 25 cents local calls (cheaper than RBOCs) and 25 cents/min anywhere in U.S. via coins. That's a good thing. I know what the charge is ahead of time, I pay as I go, and I can evaluate whether or not it's cheaper than my cell phone easily.
I have a cell phone here in the UK.
/. audience obviously don't travel much. Maybe Americans just don't use payphones because they have the worst public phone system I've ever seen.
I fly home to Australia, and want to call my sister to come pick me up from the airport or train station.
There is no payphone.
I have to take a cab.
That sucks.
There is nothing worse than arriving in a country to find that the public telephone system is screwed. The US-centic
Let me tell you a few stories:
In 1992, I was in the USA and wanted to call home.
Me: Collect call to Australa please.
Operator: Which carrier?
Me: What?
Oper: Which carrier do you want to use?
Me: How the fuck should I know, and why the fuck should I care? (picks ranomd name)AT&T
Oper: You'll get the call cheaper if you call this string of 16 digits before the nmber.
Me: JUST CONNECT THE CALL DAMNIT!
I hate to think how I would have got on if I didn't speak (American) English.
In 1996, I again arrived in the USA. I landed in Newark, and was to connect to Raleigh-Durham where someone was waiting. My flight was cancelled, so I went to call them.
First, I have to pay to get directory assistance. Then, they ask me for like $3.25 in quaters to even connect the call. WTF? In Australia the minimum payphone charge is 40 cents. That buys you an UNLIMITED length local call, or timed call to ANYWHERE. Sure, if I call 1/2 way across the continent I'll get about a 10 second call, but at least I get connected and the other party know I'm there.
If the phone companies made an easy-to-use public phone system using robust equipment (e.g. steel reinforced handset cables and gum-proof coin-slots) then more people would use it.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
payphones are more complicated than just "do they make money"; there are a lotta regulatory issues as well. this article explains some of the mishmash of stuff involved in different types of calls, and who gets paid. also: while bellsouth might not consider the money they make on payphones to be worth it, a small, local operation like bob's payphones might find that small profit plenty to keep a business going.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
This is why I keep my cell turned off when I carry it with me. It's nice, however, for the convenience of being able to check my messages from anywhere I want if I am expecting a call. Also nice for when my car breaks down on me yet again. In the past, I have even carried a pager along with the cell. If someone pages and I don't want them to reach me, I ignore the page. If it's someone I wanna talk to, say a hot date (hypothetically speaking, geeks never get dates, right?), I can use the cell to call them back. Literally three people have my cell number. Two of those got it from caller ID. I have since blocked caller ID on my phone.
The situation that you outline is similar to the situation affecting other public resources such as transport, schooling, or drinking water. It goes like this:
We start having inherited a reasonable public resource, cheap or free and open to everyone. The quality is good enough for the majority of people to use.
Private companies try to make money by offering a "competing" service at high cost to the user. They pressure public bodies to downgrade the public resource and use advertising to denigrate the public resource and its users.
The more affluent part of the population buy the private resource. This meets their needs so they see no reason to pay taxes to maintaing the public resource, or to expect the state to provide it.
The public resource degrades through lack of funding and interest (at least by the vocal group of affluent citizens) until it becomes a resource "for the poor". The rich end up paying lots for marginally better service, and the poor are generally out of luck.
Think of public transport. In your city, is it used by managers and professionals or only by the poor? Whose children go to the public (state run) schools? Is tap water good enough for you or do you just buy Evian?
I am reasonably well off (at least for now). However, I object to this state of affairs, not only ethically but also through self interest. I don't want to spend money and time shopping for basic services such as these. I'm much rather let the state take care of these basic things so I can spend time and money on recreation and other individual pursuits.
Pavlos
There is nothing wrong with the conclusion that cities cause crime. They always did. Think middle ages. Third world capitals. US "bad areas".
Pavlos
Not to mention you can get pre-paid service in most areas. It's what I use, and I love it. I pay about half of what a monthly plan would cost, since I don't use it much, and with no obligation.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
1) The law in question only applies to "normal" service and not pre-pay. This would make sense when you consider that normal service involves a contract, and minors cannot enter into a legal contract.
2) Just because Verizon doesn't have a restriction...
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Pay phones in my area are always occupied by people from nearby low-cost housing neighborhoods who I guess can't afford a phone. What sounds like happened in your town is that somebody noticed there were a large group of melanin-enhanced folks hanging around the pay phone at the local Taco Bell where the yuppie kids always go on school nights and it upset some parents. Bullshit.
This story is premature, anyway, pay phones are in no danger yet. Fluff.
"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
As long as there's any significant demand it will be filled. It may be more expensive than you'd like, but I don't see why that's a problem. Why shouldn't the cost of maintaining a pay phone be paid by the people who use it? It's like the "universal service fund" that subsidizes lines to rural areas that would otherwise be more expensive; again, why should the extra costs of providing service to outlying areas be hidden? If the response is that some people are too poor to afford the true costs, then I would think it would be more efficient to provide assistance to the poor people than to distort market prices for everyone.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I still see a need for pay phones in general, but I think they need some serious upgrades. First on my list would be a revised interface to completely avoid any need to touch the device. The conventional dial pad could be kept to avoid any need to "train" users, just make the "buttons" into non-touch sensors. The "handpiece" should be eliminated entirely. There's certainly no need for a hand-held microphone! I'm not sure about the design of the speaker to avoid touching it and also maintain the privacy of the call, but there must be some way of handling that.
Perhaps the question should be "how would you upgrade a pay phone to make it worth keeping around" rather than whether they should be kept around at all.
No Laughing Allowed!
Think of all the areas out in the sticks that don't get PCS coverage.
Also, think of all of the people, like me, who don't pay $45 or more a month to afford the "luxury" of being interrupted all of the time by a portable ringing nuisance. Until cell phones get darned cheap or my employer requires me to have one, I will stay cell-free.
Pay phones are hopefully going to be around for a long time.
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
At least it's not your home phone number that doesn't exist. My sister and my grandparents live about 100 miles away from me and can't call me at home. Their phone company insists that my exchange doesn't exist. Despite months of complaining noone will accept responsibility for the problem. Frankly, I'm so sick of this that I'm getting rid of the landline alltogether. My cell phone is cheaper than my landline and has more features. Furthermore, when I move next month I know that I'll be able to put my cellphone in my pocket and take it with me. Last time I moved it took the phone company more than 2 months to activate my service.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Um... they have power switches. How do you think I get the thing to shut up when I'm at the movies? And I'll bet you'll be sitting smugly in your car the next time you run out of gas in the middle of the desert, happy not to have a cell...
Hell, don't get one, I don't care. But the "I don't want to be that accessible" argument just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Just don't tell your boss the number.
Indeed, only 51%, as of the end of 2000, had payphones, according to Gartner Dataquest, and of those, only 40% used them regularly.
If you are calling from payphone to payphone, what does it matter if it's tapped/logged? Assuming you don't use names, or mention times and/or locations..
obviously you've never had a cell phone, and realized how damn usefull they are.
Just because some people use them incorrectly, doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to make good use of one. With your argument, because some guy in an SUV cut you off, or a granny in a buick is driving 10 under the speed limit in the left hand freeway lane, it makes all cars bad, and you won't drive them.
doesn't make any sense, does it? If you know how to drive, and you can useyour automobile correctly, that's really all that matters, now isn't it?
i love how often there are stories posted that assume that everyone on the planet has a computer and net access....
this time, there's an assumption that everyone has a cell phone.... just ludicrous.
what a sheltered world.
If you believe that pay phones were removed because they attract criminal types, please send me large amounts of money for future delivery of genuine imitation snake oil. The removal of pay phones is a business decision. In addition to lower use because of cell phones, distrust of people who don't like being monitored, the disabling of received calls to prevent avoidance of pay phone charges, and other things in the comments, there is simple vandalism. An isolated pay phone is a tempting target for a broke vandal, and maintaining these phones is expensive. In many cases, the telephone company will not repair a vandalized pay phone, and they don't care a bit about local need, only their own pocketbook. Telephone company stockholders agree, and if pay phones don't make money, they are history. In the words of Bill Vanderbilt,"The public be damned."
I think the anarchists have been pissing on the phones around here.
Nothing more annoying to step upto a phone and realize that the thing stinks to high heaven.
And who actually puts cash into payphones anymore? With cheap disposable pre-paid calling cards being so common, and 1-800 numbers being free, I'm suppried they make any money at all.
I hate to see pay phones disappear and this sounds like a nice way to keep 'em alive a little longer. Heck, hacking pay phones is where it all started for the likes of Cap'n crunch.
Anyone else see a problem with this attitude?
Slashdot 2003: I'd hate to see CDs disappear and maybe there's a nice way to keep 'em alive a little longer. Heck, ripping CDs is where it all started for the likes of Sean Fanning.
[
I think it's funny that every now and then someone states that because some new technology is around it's ancestors will die.
newspapers are still alive and well, despite the internet.
another thing is that everyone does NOT have a damn cell phone. I don't and I'm very thankful for the pay phones that I find when I need them.
...they better keep the white and yellow pages there. Half of the time I've needed to use a pay phone, I've needed to look up a number as well. Of course my new cell phone lets me look up phone numbers from the pages through the WAP browser, not all have this feature though.
What will 2600 put on the back of their magazines if payphones go the way of the dinosaur?
Last year, while walking to a bus stop around 5AM, I realized the guy sleeping in a nearby car was actually dead. As one of the few remaining Americans who does not own a cell phone, finding a nearby pay phone was a relief (the 911 operator was a different story).
What about areas where cell phhoines can't reach? Here in Boston, the entire subway system is inaccessable to cell phones (no repeaters underground).
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
While on my way to work early one morning last October, I discovered a dead man in a car. I tried calling 911 from a pay phone around the corner, but the phone didn't work. I don't own a cell phone, I was kind of far from home and I still needed to get to work.
If there hadn't been for the pay phone at the subway station I would have had to call from work (which probably would have been dismissed as a prank).
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Of course, just like anonymity on the Net, it can be misused. But just like anonymity on the Net, it's something that I'm sure all of us, certainly the Slashdot-reading people, wants to make sure doesn't go away completely.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The problem with payphones is their price. It's
just way too damn expensive to use them. The
competition in the marketplace for long distance
has not had an impact on the payphone market.
If the payphones provided more competative
pricing, I would actually use them.
But $2.00/minute for long-distance is just
ridiculous. I'm not on a stinking air-plane!
Now on the other hand, if payphones kept their
same pricing for local calls, but were like 30c
a minute for long distance calls, that would be
a different story.
--
Twivel
Telstra in Australia went on a burst of installing new pay phones. Martin Place in the Sydney CBD was dug up prior to the Olympics and several new style "booths" installed.
The advertising on the outside went up months before the phones went in. They are obviously being used as billboards.
There is one of these booths near me on a major, noisy intersection. Just an advertising board facing the traffic with an unusable phone stuck on the back.
Shame they're installing payphones instead of DSL...
Am I the only one who thinks this question is patently absurd? First, most people do not have any type of mobile communications device. Second, most people on earth don't have any phone at all. Third, payphones currently generate in excess of five billion US dollars revenue per annum.
This "question" seems to be an exercise in showing how techno savvy the author is, rather than asking a practical or intelligent question. "Analog communication via landline? Oh that is just so 20th century dahling." This seems like one of the many Slashdot discussions that get sucked into some geektopia fantasy land. I don't know about your reality but in mine there are people living in subway tunnels, boxes, and doorways, and I doubt they are much impressed with pay phones' nostalgia value.
The difference is the type of risk involved. It's not so easily scientifically abstracted as a microwave can be. The biological risks are very real and proof of them is beyond any doubt. A common cold virus is but one example of how simple the threat is. A flu virus is an example of how a payphone can kill you.
Scrap the payphones! While we're at it, scrap interac, atms, public washrooms, and anything else that biologically exposes you to such high risks. I say get a cathoder, use only your credit card so you don't have to touch those dirty keypads, and get a satelite phone if you need connectivity. But for goodness sake, whatever you do, don't use a payphone!
If it's nostalgia you've got, put em in a museum, behind bullet proof glass, with high security alarms! Those damned payphones can't be trusted for nuthin. They're the primary cause for a generation of hackers with endless sniffles -- don't let this happen to Your children!
"One ringy-dingy..."
Considering the libertarian/capitalistic streak that runs through the /. community,
How strange.
Usually the "/. community" is accused of being long-haired hippie pinko anarchists and communists... ;-)
Or could it be that the readers/posters on /. actually have different views and opinions, and do not form a homogenous "crowd"?
/Dervak
I want to make a prediction....as cellphones get cheaper and cheaper, not only will cell phones get more popular, but landlines will slowly start to not be the home phone. In fact, cable or some other data cable will replace your phone lines. There will be no home phone number, just your number. Telemarketers can now call you no matter where are! :) Serously folks, the home phone line will be history, it's just a matter of when. Public phone should not go away untilk there's a reliable and cheap global phone standard (thru satellites). When using a satellite, you can even be in a rural area with no dropped calls. (well, in the future anyway)
Gorkman
What is worse is many payphones break and are left unfixed so when you go to call 911 it does not work.
In Madison WI pay phones have been 35 cents for a long time, but I went to make a call the other day and the fucking thing was fifty cents... Worse than the post office. I might be forced to become one of those jerks with the cell phones.
btw ot - who wants to do web surfing on one a screen with 5 fucking lines? I asked people at work what phone I should buy and a guy says he goes through sprint, pays 60 bucks a month and has calls dropped all the time. Im like 60 bucks for shitty service WTF!?
We have the best government that money can buy.
802.11 wireless ethernet from companies like Wayport should make that use less significant.
I know you are going to say the wireless cards are too expensive, but come on, you own a laptop.
It was a stroll through memory lane to see folks lined up several deep at every pay phone in Pioneer square, trying to check on loved ones.
Untill cell coverage is adiquite for 90% of the customers to hit the lines simultaniously in a major city after a disaster, plus provide emergency services coverage, I'd *hope* that landlines don't go away...
Cities don't prostitute people, people protitute themselves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The next step is the death of all analog phone lines. They are a public service many people no longer wish to subsidize. If you look at your phone bill, you will realise that the $9 basic service is really costing you $35 a month after all of the taxes and what not are added in, before any long distance charges. This is more than the cost of cell phone service. As more people understand this and get comfortable living without a land line there will be fewer paying custormers to service those land lines and they will go tits up. DSL may be the only thing that land lines are good for.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I once did some freelance work for a guy that ran his own payphone business. He bought the phones, negotiated for the business owners for location rights, installed them and collected buckets of quarters every week. Pretty much anyone can run a payphone business - be it a network of 5 or 500 payphones - if there's money in it, someone will do it, whether it's US West or your neighbor. One of the (seemingly few) bennies of telco deregulation.
So I am on my cel phone with an important client, and my battery dies. I dart to the nearest pay phone and start dropping change. Went through a 35-cent startup, and 3 5-cent increases.
Without a payphone, I'd be SOL.
I can't tell you how many times you are in an airport, and you see people on the pay phone. With the digital cel phones, the rates are good but the service is choppy.
Cel phones won't kill the payphone.
The "paper" disposable cel phones that I saw on a science portion of the news a few weeks ago will. Payphones as they are will probably be vending machines for these paper cel phones, and there no longer is a reason to not have an emergency out-going only cel phone on you.
Alex
If payphones were a "dying breed" 1-800-COLLECT and 1-800-CALL-ATT wouldn't still be spending millions of dollars on advertising. No, they'll be around for a while.
But yes, I like payphones. And when you find them here, they usually have also headphones and the buttons with numbers, thats kind of surprise for me. Its not what I was used to back home...
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Right on man.
Without payphones to check, where will I get my laundry change?
Well, my cell phone would more or less be permanently off, and the monthly fees would cost considerably more than the 4 payphone calls that I'd make.
Honestly, I don't want to be accessible. I have no boss to worry about; I'm a university student. If I feel like talking on the phone, I stay in and talk on the phone. If I was to own a cell phone, it would be a completely meaningless expense, because it would always be off.
People ran out of gas and managed fine in the days before cell phones. Perhaps cell phones are convenient in that situation, but honestly, how often does that happen? I've been on this planet for 23 years, and have never been stranded on the side of a remote highway.
I would never buy a cellphone, for the mere fact that I wouldn't want to be that accessible. I hardly ever answer the phone when I'm home, so why would I want to cart a cellphone around with me?
However, I do have the occasional need when I'm out in public to make a phone call, in which case I'm thankful for public phones.
I don't think public phones will be going anywhere any time soon. The majority of people that I know don't have cell phones, and the public phones in the areas I frequent seem to experience moderate usage.
Would you care to name this city?
--
You _do_ realize that not every segment of society can afford cellphones, don't you?
Public phones are a vital resource in some cities/neighborhoods. Just 'cause your perfectly mowed suburban yuppie enclave doesn't have much use for them doesn't mean they are useless.
Get outside for once, dude...
The final straw that pushed me kicking and screaming into getting a cell phone was the lack of functioning pay phones while I was trying to find a company in Northern Virginia. I eventually found one that worked (kind of), but the street noise was so loud, I could not hear the other party. When phone booths were removed, supposedly due to litigation, the usefulness of pay phones dropped dramatically. My wife and I got PCS phones the same week. Now that I have one, I am happy to have it, but I still use the pay phone in the subway occasionally. I don't think that pay phones will every go away at sights of public transportation.
Massive STRIDES, not "strives". GEEZ.
If we were in a truely capitalistic environment with no subsidizing or legalizing of monopolies the cost of a phone line would be no different for business use or home use.
There would be no tax incentives to claim a phone line as a business expense as there would be no taxes to be counted against.
Given the above libertarian situations you would have incentive to set up a payphone as long as you got more quarters than the monthly charge for the phone line and the rental of the space the phone occupied.
It is goverment assistance of large monopolies that give these monopolies the ability to decide whether or not something is profitable to themselves.
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
Plus with payphones there is generally less radio signal emitted, so it frees up a lot of bandwidth in the RF spectrum for other more necessary uses. (like other things that can't be attached to a phone line)
How about we use the freed-up space for public access terminals for the Internet, like they have in libraries?
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
I don't want a cell phone.. I don't need a cellphone.. but peer preasure is getting to me.. Plus all the friggin pay phones in the area are COCOT's and wont recognize the new area code they created in the area for cell phones so if I try and call my friends cell phone it says it has to be a long distance call.. If I try it with a 1 then the area code it says it doesnt require an area code.. DOH! BTW.. the operator and the phone company is no help and they don't care..
-=SiGH=-
Antenna on top of a phone booth is less a "risk" than the mobile phone antenna next to your head. It's just basic physics.
None of the scientific studies indicate a health risk from mobile phones. The only statistical health link I've seen is that mobile phone users have more fatal traffic accidents...
Lawyers and their customers, in search of rich companies to sue, like to quote the few available studies that seem to indicate health problems. They fail to mention, that most of those studies have had serious faults or are considered scientifically sound.
On the other hand, having a lot of valid studies showing there is no detectable health effect, does not exclude a possible unknown effect.
Studies on possible mobile phone health effects are mainly made because of public and media interest. That also assures funding for every team that remembers to mention 'mobile/cell phones' in their grant application
Home Depot carries every type of freakin' screw ... way more types than the little hardware store does.
Large telcos are the only reason most of us have ever seen a pay phone in the first place. Hardly a failure of business.
basic physics? consider distance as a factor in risk. double the distance from the antenna, receive one fourth the power. Right next to the head is actually about the worst case scenario.
no big sig
On almost any contract, contest, etc you will find:
"void where prohibited by law"
I am sure some here in the Verizon fine print you will find that.
Ascii artist &
I will keep this brief.
In my state, CA, it is illegal for a person under the age of 18 to own a pager, cellphone, or a credit card. Now thats not to say that people obay the law but it is none the less the law.
So long as restrictions like this persist, and I think they should, then the phone companys should be required to maintain payphones.
Ascii artist &
For stability, give me wires over wireless any day.
I don't know where people get the idea that we don't need payphones. Earth to Verizon/Qwest/BellSouth/whoeveryourlocalPhoneCo is -- some of us don't *want* cellphones. They're a waste of money to some of us who don't feel we need them and I don't plan on getting one myself.
Come to think of it, I don't quite get why emergency callboxes are going out of style either -- they're all over every college campus I've seen and nowhere else. The big problem here is that the telcos like wireless -- less maintenance on their part, at least once the infrastructure is in there. The profit margins are probably better for them too. Maybe seeing it that way makes me a bit of a Luddite? I don't know. I don't care. Fact is, not everyone is going to have a phone in their pocket when they need to call home.
/Brian
Learned several things that night, one about pay phones -- I tried to use one outside a liquor store to request evac (unsuccessfully...but that's a different story).
Ghetto pay-phones (at least the ones in Charm City) are a quirky testament to survival in the 'hood. Instead of sporting several rows of shiny, rectangular buttons, ghetto phones have tiny, cylindrical metal nubs (perhaps stealing numbers is a Baltimore pastime). Not only are such instruments swaddled in extraneous layers of steel armor, two thick steel bars are welded to the front to discourage folks from coveting the fistful of quarters within. The coin orifaces on these behemoths were miniturized to defelect wanton crow-bars.
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
I, for one, love the payphone. It lets you make that oh-so-important call just after you're released from prison!
"Hi mom, I need a ride home. I just got out of the county lockup!"
"Oh my god honey, why were you there?"
"Drinking and hacking again"
"Oh son...I'm so disappointed..."
After almost a year and a half of occasional use, we decided to drop them. We agreed that $25/month could be better spent on other stuff than a phone we didn't use.
Just because we have the money for it doesn't mean we should have to spend it.
Perhaps what they really need is to simply modernize the system, using smartcards rather than coins, as every European country has done already. Despite the prevalence of cell phones in Europe, you still find phone booths everywhere, constantly being used. They're easy to find and easy to use.. no worrying about how much change to put in, you can even make international calls at rates not as ridiculous as you would expect, without fumbling for a million quarters. Smartcards also make the system much easier to maintain for the phone company.. no one has to go around to empty out the change boxes. Living in the US for 20 years I made fewer pay phone calls than I have in six months in France..
Between getting off a train and waiting for the bus home on Monday, I spent a few minutes reading various web sites, including Slashdot.
The system is X based. It appears to be using a customised version of Mozilla, using a touch-screen for input. Can anyone shed any more details on this device.
The best reasons to get rid of payphones:
:-)
1) Nostalgia's sake?
Please. If you're interested in putting your tax paying dollars towards keeping big metal boxes in our cities, go for it -- but pay that part of my taxes too, ok? Because it's waste.
Or... we could just let them rot. Not pay for them. That would solve the tax thing. I realize it's probably like $0.02 per person in taxes, but hey, every bit counts. I don't like the IDEA of keeping them up *if* they're really not as popular or a good move financially. I live near Philly, and we Gots Lots of Debt already!
2) Cell booth?
Are you kidding? With the fears of cancer (maybe it's true -- maybe not) from cell antennas, I am *not* standing a big box of cellular rays. Even if scientifically it wouldn't matter - I don't like the IDEA of being my own cell site. Ain't happening.
Besides, I have a PCS phone and I very rarely lose coverage, and the quality is always nice. There's just no need for me. And if there isn't for me, there might not be a need for others -- and if there isn't for others, even convering pay phone booths wouldn't save them.
Just some thoughts.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Of course, the other possibility is that the cost of a pay call will go up. Some phones already meter local calls by the minute. But that's a spiral to doom; make the call too expensive and more people will spring for a cell phone, usage will go down more, you will have to jack the price again, etc.
um, since when have local calls NOT been charged for? IMHO it's about 10pence for 20secs, after the 20 start charge British Telecom introduced because of waning profits.
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
I use them every chance I get. It looks a lot cooler than using a cell phone. Unfortunately in my area, they have hidden them, in the lobbies of secure buildings or they turn them off at 9 pm and turn them on way earlier than i ever wake up.
i have no legs.
Just out of curiosity, why are you "anti-cell phone"? I can understand not wanting one just because you don't make enough calls to really want one, but how can someone be "anti"?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I've also had my movie ruined by talkers. I've had clueless drivers cut me off while they're yakking to their passenger. People talk loudly to each other at the mall.
What's your point?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people who do not have cell phone, even now. So pay phones may still pay for themselves for a while. It may be easier just to leave them there
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
We still use paper books, even though some people can afford e-books.
We still use generic drugs, even though some people can afford the name brand.
Just because there is an expensive alternative some people can afford, that does not mean we need to eliminate the old ways. Hell, in most cases, the old ways are better.
-------------------------------------------------
Currently i do not own a cell phone for 2 reasons: 1. I am not convinced it is safe 2. i don't like the big capatilist companies also for those ghz computer users, some of my electronics friends have expressed concerns about the same worries of using a cell phone, mind you a computer is not pressed up against your head, but still (hey remember Jonny Nemonic [sic] plague) you can have the cpu in a different room. so needless to say i like having pay phones available. Though I think cell phones are great for car travelling for safety reasons.
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Daniel
http://people.cinn.ca/daniel/
Interesting idea. But no, I'd rather spend $.30 every two months on the phone call I *have* to make rather than $60 per month for a cell phone.
Although, I certainly wouldn't mine not having to put my ear against those disgusting things.
I used to only have a cell phone -- not even a 'regular' phone. Too many disconnects/static connections... not to mention the radiation fears. Besides, I really didn't like being bothered every hour by telemarketers/coworkers/family.
No, you need a payphone to wire a hard line in to... if they all suddenly get taken away I'm going to get a lot more suspicious of the world than I was before I was that movie...
Neither cells nor ricochet work well underground, though.
Personally, I see the pay phone staying with us a while longer. I've used one this month, when I didn't want to run up my company cell, and needed to make a long, long distance call. I think they're still needed.
funny munging
My NexTel cellphone works from most anywhere, so I don't use payphones much anymore. But not everyone has a cellphone, and not every cellphone works well -- so I suspect the payphone (as communication device and as an impromptu urinal) -- will be around a bit longer.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
If we can't have 1-800-GOAT-SEX, then what's the use ?
(yes that was a joke)
-Billco, Fnarg.com
--
In the USA, the acreage ratio of rural country to populated cities is far greater. Cellular towers are installed where the return on investment is greatest (IE largest concentration of customers), and there are plenty of rural areas where there will be no cell phone coverage for a long time.
For the doubters, look at cableTV - there are plenty of rural areas that have yet to have cable lines installed, so reception by satellite or antenna is the only option.
That's where the payphone comes in - voice communications by wire is very very entrenched in this country.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Not the Beatles.
At my private university, they have recently started removing payphones, and replacing them with free university phones.
jluxe
http://www.wustl.edu
I mean, geez, even the article says it: The point is that a significant number of people still use payphones, although that number has decreased to the point that British Telecom recently doubled the basic charge and is looking at ways to remake the booths into something sexier and more lucrative, like Internet kiosks. They're not making as much money as they used to for the phone companies, but they're not useless nostalgia items, either.
I live in New York and from the looks of it here the payphones are used alot. And they are frankly more reliable than cellphones come to think of it. I often find my self using a payphone because I cant get a line on the cellular.
I think the payphone isnt going to disapear, and neither are the regular land line phones.
Sindri Traustason
"It takes two to lie, one to lie and one to listen"
Sindri Traustason.
First, not everyone has access to technology. Heck, some people can't afford to get phone lines into their own house! Taking away payphones will only hurt them.
Second, not everyone WANTS access to technology. I had a cell phone, and cancelled it about a year ago. Why? I didn't really need it. That $30/mo could go elsewhere, and I can just use a payphone for those infrequent calls I make from someplace other than my office or home.
Besides all that, you don't want to take away kids' hobby of checking payphones for returned quarters, do you?
Mr. Ska
I slit a sheet
A sheet I slit
Mr. Ska
The advertising leaflet for Verizon prepaid cell phones in California specifically say there's no age restriction.
...even if we'd rather not admit it.
Pay phones serve their purpose for both emergency calls, and for when the cell phone won't work. I think it's too early to pronounce them dead as well because telephone booths could easily be retrofitted to provide broadband access on the go (for laptops, for example), whereas portable/cellular solutions so far aren't widespread or reliable. (Ricochet still being 28.8 I believe in the Seattle area, where I live.)
Of course, it's not like the phone company is hurting for cash from running them-- the rate hike from a quarter to $0.35 must have been a shot in the arm for their profits.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
This article really rings true (ouch, i didn't intend for that pun to happen). Recently I was stuck in a moderately large canadian city,and had to wander around for over an hour before finding a payphone.
I agree completely that payphones should be considered a public service. I can't afford to have a cell phone, and frankly i don't want one, but if my city, and other canadian cities, continue to remove payphones, I might have to get one after all. how disgusting.
!-- wit --!
If i ,ay contribute my two yen...
I admit that people use cell phones poorly, but that isn't my reason for disliking them. I don't like the idea that people could contact me at any time, anywhere. Yes, you can turn off the cell phone, but you can't turn off someone's knowledge that you *have* a cell phone.
albeit, if you don't give out the number to the phone, no one can pester you, but if you don't give out the number, why have it? Don't try to tell me you got that phone solely fo roadside assistance emergency calls (unless you're driving a '79 impala).
!-- wit --!
But they don't have to. What they need is information (comings, goings, who is in, who is out, etc.) that lead them to evidence that they can present in court. Or even better, prevention of crime by having a few well-placed conversations or police presences. Saves paperwork, time, money, and heartbreak.
You have to give law enforcement its due in this country. They probably prevent more than they catch, and do it on little enough.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Court houses, jails, bars, schools, YMCAs, hotels, government buildings, and points of transit, plus stand-alone payphones in those "special" parts of town.
In other words, phones where interesting conversations might take place. The local whorehouse phone (pay or not) is always monitored, but I have never seen a order on a public phone in a library.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Yes! Save the pay phone.
They can be a real lifesaver in case of emergencies. Say that you've been robbed/rapped/beaten/etc. and your cellphone was taken from you. How are you going to call 911 otherwise? Women are paranoid enough in this society -- asking them to go to a stranger's place to use the phone after an attack is a bit much.
Also, what about TDD users? (For those of you who don't know, a TDD machine is a teletype machine used by the deaf in order to communicate). The problem is that on a standard TDD machine, it's specifically designed for the standard phone. A "modern" cellphone just wouldn't fit, as it'd be too small.
(And of course, as other people mentioned, there's the little issue of the battery dying, accidently let it drown in a puddle, or whatever accident you can think of.)
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has a cellphone.
These days we hear more about private conversations recorded by neighbors, seedy journalists, and voyeurs. None of that happens with a call from a random payphone. If you need to say something and keep it private --- it sounds ridiculous but its true -- use a payphone.
For the same reason, I would feel more comfortable hooking into the web at an airport using a plug than I would using bluetooth or any of the other wireless protocols out today.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
You might be right about government taps. I was referring to hacker and opportunistic taps.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
I know this is a little off topic, but I have always loathed using public payphones for the simple fact that the headset is a breeding ground for viruses and bacteria. Call me paranoid, but it's been over10 years since the last time I have had a cold or been sick. And yes I also use a paper towel to open the door in a restroom.
Recently I was in a situation where I had locked myself out of the house without my mobile. Thankfully I ran down the street to my local payphone and called my mother reverse charges, who in turn called my flatmate and got her to come home and let me in. If it wasn't for the public phone I could have been waiting hours in the cold for her to come home othrwise.
i find it tough to believe that anyone would seriously consider doing away with payphones. not everyone is a silicon valley dotcom rich kid, you know... i'm doing a little bit of travelling right now, and pay phones are the only way to catch up with people i know in different cities. get rid of those, i'll have no way to get in touch when i roll into town. bad idea.
a lot of people in this world don't even have a computer or a tv, let alone a new nokia to fuck around with.
--saint----
It's really more due to the fact that pay phones (Bell called them "public phones") are no longer considered a "public resource" the way they once were. A whole city block used to be able to use public phones to receive phone calls and whoever answered the ringing phone would usually be gracious enough to run to the next house to inform the callee that the telephone was for them. However, after deregulation, instead of getting a special pay phone line from the phone company, anybody could buy a fortress phone from a catalog (COCOT), connect it to a regular phone line (POTS), and start billing callers. These private owners did not want anybody to use their property without paying a stiff fee, and successfully used the "drug dealer office" argument to remove incoming call ability from virtually all pay phones, including telco-owned ones. This act really spelled the end for the "public resource" paradigm. Many COCOT owners also ignored regulations outlawing billing customers for toll-free calls, and after a while, people got used to the idea. Now, pay phones are only used by the poor, and everybody else has a cell phone for use on the go.
I had to pick up a friend of mine from work in Irving, TX one night and forgot my cell phone. When I couldn't find him waiting where he said he would be I looked for a payphone and could not find one. Apparently the city of Irving sees payphones as being magnets for drug users and got rid of all of them. I can't tell you what a headache it was not having access to a payphone. What should have taken ten minutes turned into a two hour ordeal. I wound up having to drive into the next town over and find a payphone in the bad (i.e. strip-club-section) part of town. Looking back, other than being really annoyed I was fine, but if it was my mother in the same situation then I would be pissed because she would have been in danger.
In summary I think payphones need to be around and cities who rip them out because of potential "drug-abuse" need to be penalized in some way.
As a side note: my friend later told me that Irving's official stance on payphones is that they're dangerous and unnecessary because anyone who belongs in Irving can afford a cell phone.
If you're like me and have access to several 800 numbers (tech support people, raise your hands!) then you don't really need a cellphone, just a pager with voicemail and the following trick:
When you receive a call you just step up to the nearest payphone (not hard to find in a city like Montreal) and call the person back for free (i.e. Dial 800 number, ask to be transfered by your buddy at the other end).
Am I just spoiled by my job, or am I abusing my priviledges? Who cares! It's still way cheaper and almost as convenient as a cellphone!
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
If you go and look at the sec filings for the big telcos over the last 5 years you can chart to rather sudden loss in revenue from pay phones. That means the big telcos have to get out of that business.
It's just business folks.
Of course, that doesn't mean that someone with lower built in costs couldn't offer the service. And, they are doing just that.
StoneWolf
I used to carry a 24/7 pager for work, and a cell phone. But just when you needed it, the damn battery would die. Many times I used a payphone to save my ass.
Things are better now with the hardware, but I don't think it will be anytime soon when I would want to be stuck out somewhere and my pager going off without any backup.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Cellnet was once an independent company I believe, but BT took them over years ago, so it's actually a whole owned subsidiary of BT.
BT would have loved to rollout ADSL four years ago but their leased line dept was too worried about being shafted.
BT is a company full of contradictions with fingers in every pie, and they have never been able to shake off their mentality and inefficiencies of the state dinosaur days. They also had a number of failed deals, one with MCI then AT&T for example. That's why there's so many conflicts and why the managements in such a mess... and consequently why they're £30 billion in debt, their market cap is only £28b, so they owe more than they're worth!
Personally, after being shafted by them for a number of years, I have little sympathy for them, when they called last week begging me to have ADSL installed, I took great delight in telling to fsck off because I have a cable modem and they're 5 years to late.
They were planning to float or merge Cellnet to relieve debt.
As for the payphones, they cannot abandon them, they have a universal provision agreement that legally requires them to install payphones and lines in rural areas. So they're being forced to adapt, an alien concept to BT, their new 'web phones' are actually quite good, there's quite a few in the tube stations that provide access for free to promote interest.
Using the payphones as mini mobile base stations is a good idea too, especially in the city where signals can be weak due to the multipath problems big buildings present. Having a base station at ground level would alleviate those problems.
Of course, there's always the irony of BT leasing the base stations to rival phone providers that are competing with BT|Cellnet and the pay phone itself. Love it.
If you wanna see people who are truely "anti-cell phone" check Phone Bashing , hilarious.
Nah... in the UK cell companies have been putting phone masts on school roofs and plain fields for years now, and it's never done me any harm... nor the mad cows.
It's a safety thing you know... when you came home from school a night you would glow, so nobody could run you over by mistake.
I have to go talk to a tree now, goodbye.
So goes the glory of my country, as we see another example of blaming hardware for perceived woes of the people-ware.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'm not picking up the Chicken Little end of the argument so much as questioning whether any sense of security using a payphone is a placebo.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
In response to the preceding posts, I'd argue that the only way to be anonymous would be to call an intermediate number and have something else forward the encrypted traffic.
My argument is that there might not be any way to obscure ALL marks (identifying high frequencies in a voice modulator device, for example).
We're talking about a classic cryptology game here, and if price is no object only the mists of antiquity offer security...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I agree that this is nice.
But I dont use public computers to check my email or anything else that requires a password. I am even sort of worried about using a real address when using mapquest. Granted I am not a terrorist, but I am worried about those being monitored. No one needs to know unless I tell them. I dont want to have to read the EULA on the side of the phone so that I know it doesnt say that if I use the phone I agree to give up all my rights to privacy. I wouldnt use those phones but someone else might have to.
How secure are those public terminals?
Can the us gov monitor my use of data on those lines?
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
That's basically all I use pay phones for!
Here in Belgium, payphones are now being used for a variety of reasons:
to store money on your Proton card (a Proton card is a chipcard containing an electronic wallet).
to increase the amount of money on the pre-pay card of your cellular telephone (you use the payphone once in a while to make sure your cellular keeps working).
I'm sure other applications can be thought of. Another good reason for keeping them is to make sure that people can call the police when their cellphone is stolen.
actually i wish they would turn booths into internet kiosks.. although it would be hard to build one that could deal with the punishment it would get.
I'm not trying to be naive, I know that the FBI (I mean England) probably has tons of phones tapped, but they don't care about the local brothel, crackhouse, whatever. I'm just curious if tapping pay phone lines is something that your local police even waste their time on.
I see no practical reason for removing any number of payphones. Despite what commericals set in Mathattan displaying all new internet/communication technologies might indicate, not everyone has a cell phone. Sure, maybe more than you think, or maybe some who you'd think otherwise wouldn't, but not enough, by any means, to obliterate payphones. Think of moneyless minors, people who can't afford cell phones, people who don't like cell phones. On another important note, cellular phones are mobile, which have their disadvantages. What if you leave yours in your car or at home and you need to make an emergency call? Well that payphone you know about on 9th is still where it was the day before. Out of change? Dial a free call service just like they say on those repetitive money-saving call service commericals, one's bound to stay in your head. Statistics don't show how in some cases people are forced to use payphones for their respective reasons. If you want to think of it in a literal way: do you usually see a person in a phonebooth on the street while you're walking by one? Probably not. But if you want to buy a really popular product in a store that everyone is buying, do you always see huge crowds of people rushing in and taking every last one off the shelves? No, but that doesn't mean that that product isn't the best-selling in its field and the triumphant one over its competitors. Now I am not saying that more people use payphones than cellular phones, or that payphones are generally better than cell phones, but I am saying that more people use them than it may seem at first glance. Do payphones take up an excessive amount of space? No. Are they particularly harming anyone? No. Let the payphone survive in every city.
Jawa
Jawa
http://gryps.paravolve.com/jawa/
As I suggested in another post above, it is obvious that pay phones are a good thing to have. And we're not going to have them soon. There has been plenty of info on this lately, planting the seeds of acceptability when it gets really hard to find one.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
That said, it's a shame they are going the way of the dodo. Yep, they are.
The problem is that, because of cellphones, pay phone use is decreasing. That means pay phones make less money. That means the for-profit corporations now running them will pull them. Simple economics -- if you're the only one in town who needs a left-handed three-pitch anchor screw, don't expect Home Depot to carry it.
So without making anything like a general comment (heh) on the topic, let me just point out that this is one small area where capitalism is clearly failing. For all the evils of the ATT/Bell monopoly, it did subsidize necessary but unprofitable services like pay phones and hard to service local lines with the profits from more lucrative and voluntary things like long distance. Not a good thing if you're a big long distance customer, but a very good thing if your car just got jacked and you need to call the police.
Considering the libertarian/capitalistic streak that runs through the /. community, it is kind of amusing to see this outpouring of enthusiasm over a service which is clearly going to die because the evil corporate pigs don't make enough money off of it. Pay phones are just one detail in the broad category of infrastructure which IMO really should be maintained by taxes and subsidies, because without some social engineering they just won't exist even though they are beneficial.
Of course, the other possibility is that the cost of a pay call will go up. Some phones already meter local calls by the minute. But that's a spiral to doom; make the call too expensive and more people will spring for a cell phone, usage will go down more, you will have to jack the price again, etc.
If someone has a solution to this that will not get called "communism" or "socialism" by the usual elements, I'd be very interested in hearing about it. Meanwhile, this is just one of those things that, to me, argue against the purely liberarian/capitalistic worldview -- whatever its other beneficial contrasts might be to the current overall situation.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I've lived in Vancouver for 20 years, and local calls have always been, and still are twenty five cents. Not only that, but the phone company has recently extended the distance of a local call. How long will it be before they bump up the cost to 35 cents? 50 cents?
What with all the hub bub about cell phones causing cancer, is there a risk that having a flipping cell phone antenna on top of the pay phone booth could cause problems? I mean, you'd have the things on street level basicly blasting out microwaves a few feet from the heads of hundreds of passersby. Saturate an area in those things and you're talking a sea of radiation.
Or I could be completely wrong.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
All I ask is a warm bed, a kind word, and UNLIMITED POWER
As a whacko, I fear cancer causing, mind controlling, alien lifeforce contacting wireless devices. I require payphones in order to contact other members of my militia. The fact that they are disappearing in my hometown of Albany is proof positive that the jewish-scientologist-communist-Micro$oft conspiracy has gotten to our beloved mayor jennings. First it was disappearing handsets and the bus station, then they were allowed to paint all the fire hydrants with that dangerous aluminum based yellow paint. How far will it go before they own us all?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
As long as the tool of the profiteering telco antichrists, the cellphone, remains among us, of course the payphone is as good as dead.
Cellphones are fucking nuisance. Granted that some use the things for truly legitimate reasons, the vast majority of people these days don't, and that's what I seethe over. Sally shooting the gossip to Jenny does NOT count for legitimate use. That's called taking things for granted.
Icephreak
Toronto, Canda
Yep, you're right. And besides, the drug dealers and prostitutes just got beepers and cell phones anyway.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
afaik, it's considered like searching your house, they need a warrant from a court, and to get that they need some sort of evidence that this is a necessary course of action.
;-).
(unless there are very extreme circumstances, i suppose, or its national security or something like that
A destruction of payphones would be ridiculus.
Not everyone has or wants a cellphone. Personally I don't want a digital chain. I don't want everyone to be able to get ahold of me 24 hours a day no matter where I am. Jobs, annoying people, bill collectors... I don't need these people calling while I'm trying to enjoy a walk down the street. If you turn it off too long everyone will start to think you're dead or something.
I also don't want to pay 20+ bucks a month for the
5 calls a year I might make while outside.
I've lived my entire life without cell phones
and will continue to do so, I haven't had any
problems without one yet. The benifits aren't
worth the downsides. Everyone must consider the
benifits to drawbacks of technology.
I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet (I did a quick search for a few key words).
You still need payphones for those people who may well have a cellphone, but it only works way back in the UK where they're from.
With the way cellphone coverage in the USA works, to my understanding, the same applies to someone who's simply hopped over to the next state to visit friends or whatever.
Here in Britain, the minimum cost of making a call from a Brtish Telecom (the major telco) payphone rose at the beginning of the year from 10 pence (around 15 cents) to 20 pence (30 cents).
Of course, BT didn't announce this hike with the fanfare it makes when it's announcing some well overdue service (like affordable broadband - still waiting on that) but it did raise two points in its defence:
1) The increase in the minimum charge was the first for about a generation; and
2) It's takings from payphones (and hence its profits) had dropped by about a third in a very short period (a year I think), mainly due to the large increase in mobile phone ownership.
Fortunately, under its operating rules (BT was formerly publicly owned, is almost a monopoly and is regulated by an albeit sycophantic regulator), the company is legally bound to maintain many public phone boxes, especially those in remote areas that tend to be amongst the least profitable.
Our phone boxes won't be disappearing overnight, but it is inevitable that the cost of using them will increase in the coming years whilst the cost of telephony in general falls. Not an ideal situation by any means but at least calling 999 (our equivalent of 911 and also a free call) in an emergency won't be affected by the decline in payphone usage.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Long live the pay phone!
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Not only that, but if they get rid of pay phones, where will I get all my drugs and whores? How do they expect me to get drugs and whores without convenient payphones on the streetcorner?
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
..this may be a bit off-topic, but don't forget that the newest 'pay' phones due out soon are disposable =) Have you seen the disposable cell phone? Sounds crazy, but there is a company (help me out here) who is creating cell phones that you can throw away after using a pre-paid amount of minutes.
Of course, I think part of the phone stays with you and you just replace certain components at the local gas station. But it's still a cool idea.
Phone booths themselves? Well I haven't seen one of those around in ages. I guess they were replaced by those little pods that people huddle in.
On a side note, I'm not sure what would happen to the people down in the trailer park if they took the neighborhood phone away. =)
a good way to dial 911 in any emergency and never gives you an out of calling area!
$crew u guyz i'm going....shit i already am home
$crew u guyz i'm going....shit i already am home
so get the fuck out!!
I was going for humor with the "nostalgia" comment. Either my writing style is off or your sense of humor is. I'll also freely admit that both may be the case.
In retrospect, I should have put it as "at least for nostalgia's sake" instead of "just for nostalgia's sake".
So where were you when I was originally submitting the question? Probably celebrating analog landlines with a primitive tribal dance.
;^p
evanchik.net
Yeah, but the more they try to close the loopholes, the cleverer the hacks will get to get around them. And the cleverer the hacks are, the more inspired the hackers will be to publicize and exploit them.
Just because their will be a reaction to attempts to break open sytem, that doesn't mean that we should lose our ambition to try and hack them
Now before I get flamed for being an amoral anarchist with no understanding of the need for property and order, let me point out that much good comes out of hacking, and that most hacking is not harmful. It allows progress by using a system in ways it was not intended to be used. This is progress.
Wasn't Galileo just hacking our understanding of motion? He got in trouble for it, though.
evanchik.net
Probably still a lot less than half the people in the US have cellphones. Also, people who travel internationally, but not often enough to justify getting two or three cellphones for different countries' systems need payphone in other countries.
I was in Chicago last year and I was trying to make a call to my aunts which is where I was staying but I didn`t know the number and talk about complicated.
I wasn`t sure of the area code and the operator was looking for a credit card and they wouldn`t take my one and then they wouldn`t connect me.
I ended up having to by a pen and paper so I could write the number down just to ring her, There was no details on the phone about how to ring the operator and prices.
Here in Ireland they phones are all clearly mark so you can ring the operator and other details you will need.
Deu
If phone booths disappear, I for one will miss the smell of urine while I talk on the phone. Of course I guess I could always pull over, whip it out, and 'drain my oil' while I talk on my cell phone bring back that old familiar atmosphere.
Here in the city I live in, pay phones were removed because it was alleged that all they do is draw drug dealers and prostitutes. ;)
I've never seen either hanging around..
And to think all this time I was under the impression that pay phones attracted people that wanted to make phone calls. Imagine that!
Somehow I can't help smirking when I visualize a conversation between a crack dealer and the pencil-neck manning the register at a Rat Shack.
In other words, the push to remove pay phones is motivated mainly by the phone companies, who lose more and more money all the time as fewer and fewer people use them.
It's not yet another case where the man!!! is trying to keep people down. It's a losing proposition in most of the places where the phone companies pull them out of. Do you seriously think they'll pull them from locations where they make good money?
If you look closely at the push to remove pay phones, you'll find that it's motivated mainly by phone companies (especially mobiles) who want to eliminate public access to telephones. Sure, cell phones calls are cheaper, but you don't need a credit card to make a pay phone call - nor a $250 deposit. This is the same sort of business vampirism that makes phone calls from prisons cost several dollars per minute in some states through a monopolist phone provider. Probably few Linux geeks see the absence of available public telecommunications as a serious problem; but there are many more people stuck in relative poverty than checking out Slashdot right now. Pay phones, without a steady income or steady job, may be their only way of talking to their families, for example. For them a pay phone is worth a hell of a lot more than a data jack in an airport phone.
When I travel to Europe I have no choice but to use pay phones. Cellular is of course a different standard, and I'm not paying a fortune to rent a cell phone for a week. Thankfully pay phones are still a common sight there.
One item you may not have noticed is disappearing/gone would be the phone booth. It's an all american item. Where else is superman going to change into his jumpsuit?
Its because they charge you the inconvenient 35 cents. When it was a quarter all you needed was one coin. If I don't have a dime I have to put in 50 cents just to make a call! That's so irritating I'm about to by a cell phone my self now.