Recycling Pay Phones into Terminals

Roland Piquepaille writes "Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published a story about the death of the pay phone. It was aptly named "Requiem for the Pay Phone." Basically, it argued that as cell phones use increase, pay phones are retired from the streets. Now, according to Fortune in "Making Pay Phones Pay," Bell Canada is trying to change this situation. "Bell Canada recently started converting public pay phones in Toronto, Montreal, and Kingston into terminals for 'Wi-Fi' Internet connections. Some U.S. phone companies may soon follow suit." Check this column for more details and concerns or visit the Bell Canada's AccessZone page for details on the program and pilot locations."

Comments

If my Phone/DSL company (Verizon)

[Anonymous Coward]

Started including Wi-Fi access via their pay-phones for me, it'd make me not only a happier customer, but one willing to pay a bit more for service.

Previous Post

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe there was a post on this earlier. I think this is just part of a growing trend by which blanket wireless coverage will supersede cabled connections.

Hackers.

[richjoyce]

So know are we going to be able to use pay-phones as hacking devices like in the movie Hackers (and Hackers 2)?

Money

[trans_err]

The idea truly is grand, and how great will it be to sit on the sidewalk, or outside of the movie theatre with your laptop soaking up those WiFi rays.

1. I dont understand how they plan on making money, will you have to preregister with bellsouth, or whomever.

2. I see a lot of potential if this could be used in conjunction with PDA's, the idea of being able to walk to certain parts of the street and hit a DSL connection would be very nice.

Re:Money

[kawaichan]

how payment might work:

1) Your laptop/PDA/whatever requests an IP address via DHCP.
2) Access point hands out IP address, makes a note against that IP address that "has not paid yet"
3) At this point, all that you can do is access HTTP and DNS.
4) You point your browser at any web site - let's say http://slashdot.org for grins.
5) DNS succeeds.
6) Your computer does an HTTP GET.
7) Access device sees you've not paid yet. Sends HTTP REDIRECT to https://fork.it.over.to.me
8) Your laptop looks that up. Gets an IP address.
9) Your laptop requests page.
10) Page comes up - input credit card here.
11) You do so. Access device marks you has "paid for 1 Hour". Ports open up.
12) You again try /., and it goes through.

My proposal.

[kaosrain]

Why don't we all band together, and whenever a user submits a dupe we all add them to our 'foes' list? Doesn't directly stop anyone from posting repeats, but if I knew that submitting one could get me hundreds of foes, I'd probably check my submissions for duplicates.

Re:How about 911?

[Simon Field]

Pay phones are going away because they are not making money.

This idea may save those pay phones, since DSL and voice can co-exist. And having a phone by the WiFi terminal allows you to get tech support (for another quarter?) when things aren't working.

As for people who can't afford cell phones not having access to 911, I don't know if this is more of a problem since the cell phone was invented, or less. Finding someone with a cell phone nearby these days may be easier than finding a pay phone nearby was in the bad old days.

Re:Cafe Security

[zulux]

No matter show secure the "FI"delity is stated, I get about the same warm fuzzies transmitting anything of any value over such a system as I would shopping online at an internet cafe.

Do wha I do: Make a secure tunnel from your laptop to an OpenBSD server you have hanging off the net and set up as a gateway. They can grab all the wireless packets they want, but it ain't gonna' get them anywhere.

Already in the UK

[Cally]

BT has been doing this in the UK for ages - I think I saw the first ones (in Liverpool St station, London) in late 1999 or early 2000. There's one on the corner of my street now. (Brixton.)