Slashdot Mirror
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?
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!!!
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.
> 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
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.
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.
"One ringy-dingy..."
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..."
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...
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.
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.
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:[.]
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.
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!