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Requiem for the Disappearing Pay Phone
StarEmperor writes "This Washington Post article describes the steady disappearance of pay phones as cell phones become more commonplace. Many pay phones, which used to generate hundreds of dollars per month in revenue, are now used so infrequently that they cost money to operate. I wonder what kind of environmental hazard is posed by junking thousands of pay phones?"
If you just want the convenience and safety though there are tons of plans for pay-as-you-go. Buy some minutes up front and leave it around for an emergency. If you just need it for 911 then just get someone's old disconnected phone like the battered women's shelters do for people since they can still dial 911. Now, as I think about it, I've not used a payphone since I got a cell phone. Hell, I never have any change for the payphone anyway and it'd be easier to just borrow someone else's phone for a minute if you're in a group and give them a buck or two for the convenience. Payphones carry diseases and god knows what else on them. It'd be like putting a public urinal up to my mouth when you make a phone call. No thanks!
1. Terrorists and other street criminals don't use public telephones -- mostly they don't work, it's inconvenient and there's no privacy.
2. Criminals use stolen cell phones to make their calls and throw them away every couple of days.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Actually, it really is a genuine "Red Box". The REAL coin-tone generator circuit board in a real Ma Bell payphone is in fact in a red plastic box. That's where the term "Red Box" came from.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I've also heard these days that the phones turn off the handset microphone until you've paid up, so you need to do some funky tricks to get your signal in.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
That was actually a hilarious moment in the first Superman movie- Clark Kent was rushing to change into Superman for his first "public action" (saving Lois from a helicopter disaster) when he stopped and briefly glanced up and down at one of the half-booths common in NYC nowadays (and back in the 70's when the film was made).
It obviously didn't fit his requirements, as he went on to a revolving door which he spun at super speed to blur his transformation (which seems moot, after opening his shirt in the middle of a crowded street to reveal the Superman "S.")
Oh well, it's NYC, err, Metropolis-- no one would notice unless he was doing something abberant, like being nice or polite...
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
This is, of course, dependent on the connection. If you buy one from EBay and stick it in your house, you'll get the same busy signal as the rest of us while the china falls from the cupboards.
Just something to note when the stuff hits the fan.
I really have no idea about what charge plans are available in the USA, but here in europe you can get a GSM phone on a "pay as you go" or prepaid plan, where you don't pay a flat monthly fee, but instead buy scratch cards which give you airtime. So, you could buy a cheapass phone for less than $100 and then get a scratch card (sold practically everywhere) whenever you run out of airtime.
There is one small catch: you have to buy a scratch card at least once a year, so you are not disconnected. However that's no big deal, as the cheapest scratch cards cost $5-7. So you are just forced to use a minimum of $5-7 a year. Most people i know use way more than that per month, so it's only an issue if you get a cellphone only for incomming calls (which are free in europe) or emergencies.
(Prices in $ because slashdot would eat € in both POT and HTML)
Hands-free sets do not make driving while talking on a cell-phone any safer. See this paper from the New England Journal of Medicine for details. Basically, they cross-correlated traffic accident reports with cell phone logs and found that talking on a cell phone while driving quadruples the risk of getting in an accident, regardless of whether or not the phone is hands-free. This increased risk of accident is comparable to the increased risk of accident while driving drunk.
The difference between talking on a cell phone and talking with a passenger is that the passenger is aware of the driving situation and can halt the conversation and/or call the driver's attention to the road in case of emergency.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Payphones in the UK are required to be operated by BT, the ex-government-owned telecomms monopoly. This is part of their legacy as a former nationalised entity. I remember reading something a while ago about how BT are stuck with the whole payphone business regardless of the cost. I for one have not noticed any fewer payphones in London, except perhaps for ones that AREN'T vandalised.
:/
As for cellphones working on the London Underground - they work on the underground lines that are actually above ground - but I can guarantee that they don't work in any of the tunnels! The number of times I have been bored waiting for a tube and wanted to text message someone is testament to this!
One of the mobile networks - formerly One to One, and now part of the TMobile name - was looking into supplying a cellphone service on the underground. I'm not sure where that project went. This is a license to print money - there are millions of people every day on the underground and while they are down there they can't spend money on their phones. That said, if they start letting cellphones ring on the underground, I can't imagine the statistics for Tube passenger violence will get any better