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Do-It-Yourself Payphones or Netphones?
Controlio asks: "With the explosion of cell phones, pay phones are disappearing quickly. I work in a large sports venue that seats over 60,000 - but has only 5 pay phones. The problem is the rent on those 5 phones is ridiculous - we net a loss of over $150 per phone per month. Its a great convenience for the public, but it'd be cheaper for us to have people stand in the middle of the stadium with cell phones saying "here, make a call for free." We have a great deal of both telephone and internet capabilities - we're a brand new facility and have far more than adequate data and voice pipes to our building. The question, is how can one roll their own payphone service? Has anyone done this? Where can you purchase equipment? What are the technical ramifications if we want to stay basic or get complicated with things like TTY or internet phones? Does VoIP or POTS make more sense? Any advice on where to get started?"
Look around for "customer owned coin operated telephones" (COCOTs). You can buy your own payphone -- no need to rent, but they are a favorite target of phreakers...
A quick google search came up with this
How often do those pay phones get beat up, abused, have the receivers torn off and their coin slots filled with glue? I suspect that, unless you armored your phones like tanks, you'd wind up having to replace them every other week, or worse.
What you might consider is REDUCING the number of payphones, and putting them in easy sight of concession stands, etc, wherever your security will normally be stationed. That way they'll get more traffic per phone. And yes, it's a convenience, but cell phones have mostly put pay phones out of business already.
Why rent when you can buy, payphones are dirt cheap. Check out Payphone.com They have models for starting at 299. You can get payphones at local auctions too, for half the price. (How much is your rent at a $150 a month loss per phone?!)
Thou I like the idea of VoIP, try to keep things simple when dealing with the public. Heck, if you really just want to play with technology, get a premade kiosk for 6K that supports VoIP and see if you turn a profit. (Thou at a stadium, who wants to surf the net when the game is on...)
Just think of Morpheus reaching for the phone, and there's nothing there!
PLEASE people.
Think of the Morpheuses!
http://www.remix.net/
I dont know what stadium you work at, but the only two that seat better than 60 thousand will:
-Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia) is closing at the end of the season, with implosion in February.
-Olympic Stadium (Montreal) isn't gonna have a baseball team next year. (Let alone ever have more than 10,000 at a game)
It ain't worth rolling out VOIP or anything else given that these two wont be around next season.
It also might just be cheaper for you to just get your own cell phone. Most companies have cheap plans available for light talkers.
I would think that a stadium of 60k+ would have better cost cutting measures to worry about than 5 payphones that cost only $750/month to maintain.
Since Controlio has neglected to mention how much his present setup costs before he accounts for revenue (Ask Slashdots are painfully sparse on details these days!), we don't know whether he's paying too much for his pay phones, or just not getting any revenue. I suspect he's hoping that magic technology can provide him with phone service for a nominal cost. Which is silly. A business phone line costs $60/mo or so. I doubt if you can get any kind of fixed-point connectivity, be it POTS or IP or whatever, for any less. And in most cases, probably a lot more.
They are at several airports, and I think Disney World or Epcot had an early version of a phone lounge. The idea is that you get a little room, with a phone and ethernet jack/ terminal that you rent. You could check with one of those places, to see about cost and viability. I'm sure your friendly Cisco or Nortel salesperson would have some info for you too.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Put it another way: that's one phone per 12,000 spectators! Or if you assume that 80% of the spectators have a cell, then that's one per 2400 spectators. Imagine the lines! If they could find a cheaper solution, they'd probably have a lot more pay phones.
I would check with your state's public utility commission before making any decisions. Going into the telephone business may require more than just hooking up some hardware.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Well, it turns out that, if you over phone service to anyone, even for free, especially long distance, guess what, you have to pay various taxes. Even if you don't make the customer pay, your still have to pay the taxes to the local and state gov'ts.
So in the end, you'll end up doing more paperwork, crapola then it's worth to setup your own phone service over your own phone lines. So your options are pay the phone company to run them for you, or pay them to provide the lines you hook up to your own phone. I'm not sure what the cost of buying a pay phone is, or what the cost of a business phone in your are is (it's about $50-75 a month here). So if you think the phones will average less then $75-$100 a month in damage, it's a win to own your own phones. If you think they will average more then that, it's a losing proposition to own your own.
Personally, if it was a fixed cost $150 a month, they have to replace damanged phones, your absolutely nuts not to take them up on it. About the only options are to not provide phones at all, or to literally let them use one of your phones, either a cell, or a land line based in an office.
Kirby
1. Advertise that your pay phones don't explode
2. Charge a premium
3. PROFIT!
Are concepts that do not exist together.
Payphones were originally (way back) introduced so that people without a personal telephone available to them could make or receive calls from businesses or people who did. They were the 1910 equivilent of NetZero.
They never made a signifigant operating profit for the phone company, but encouraged people get an use telephones.
As a payphone owner, you should never expect to see a pay telephone as a potential profit center. You can, however, use it to steer its customers towards the concession stands selling $6 cups of sugared water and program salesmen.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
talk to Verizon, AT&T, etc. and work out a deal with them where you/they provide such cell phone services. They get good advertising... you get cheap phones....
All of the phones that have been removed had to go somewhere. Just buy them off the phone company outright. Buy enough extras that you have spare parts. Without the telco's overhead, it is apparently easy to make a profit on them.
The problem is the rent on those 5 phones is ridiculous - we net a loss of over $150 per phone per month. Its a great convenience for the public, but it'd be cheaper for us to have people stand in the middle of the stadium with cell phones saying "here, make a call for free."
I think you're joking here, but I don't really think this idea would be any cheaper. Lets say you still want to stick with 5 phones, so you've got 5 people holding those phones, waiting for takers. I'm assuming you will have a hard time finding volunteers to do this, or even people to volunteer use of their cell phones, so you're going to have to pay wages and monthly cell phone fees. Lets say minimum wage is $6.00/hr, and cell phones cost you $35.00/mo. You'll want to have these free cell phones available for most or all events at your stadium, so let's figure you have about ten 5 hour events per month.
Wages will cost you:
10 events/month * 5 hrs * $6/hr * 5 people = $1500 per month
Cell phones will cost you:
5 phones * $35/month = $175 per month.
$1500 + 175 = $1675 per month, compared to $750 that you lose per month with 5 pay phones.
Doesn't sound worth it to me.
This may be a good place to get the advertising dept. involved. If you could get a local cell phone carrier to "advertise their service/phones/whatever" at the game by providing free calls to customers (or calls and internet) at each event. You may even be able to make a profit on this service!
Doh!
payphones and run it all yourself. Sure, for a several of them, you're gonna rack up a decent bill, but for where you work, it should be no sweat, and after the phone bill, it's all profit. Plus, you're doing the right thing.
ooooooooo looky! Some of them even come with a port for you to plug in your laptop. and some come with credit card readers to pay for calls. Options, options, options!!!!
Also try here, here, here and there's always some good old Googling!!! Good luck on your journey to payphone bliss.
What I'd like to see is for someone to come up with a box that converts DTMF to something a cell phone can understand, assuming that something like that is actually possible. Not only would that allow me to use a Mickey Mouse phone in my car, for example (also assuming the cell could send ring signals in the other direction, too), but I could buy a payphone from any one of the sites already mentioned, get unlimited local service ($35 per month from Metro PCS, here in Atlanta), and drive around with the whole setup bolted to the back of my van. Anytime I went to a music festival or the like, I could probably make a few bucks.
They already exist. I've seen devices (don't recall where, try google) that will plug into a cell phone (not all models, buy the device and the cell phone at the same time to be sure they are compatable) and allow you to plug a normal phone into them. ie your mickey mouse phone.
I have also seen cell phone based pay phones. Not many because they cost something like a buck a minute. (It was in an area where the nearest phone line was over a mile away, a wilderness outfitters) They exist, ask your cell providers if they know anything about them.
I assume there is a normal buisness phone in some office somewhere. Just put a sign outside it that says office, and people who really need it will walk in and ask to use the phone - let them. Tell the ushers that it isn't encouraged, but those who need a phone can use the office phone.
Odds are you have a first aid station somewhere already, just give them a phone (they should have it for 911 calls anyway) and they can serve phone duty too. Just make sure long distance isn't allowed, which should be cheaper than a pay phone.
P.S. Do you have tdd access phones? I'm sure they are expensive, but I know a few deaf people and I like to remind people of their special needs. It wouldn't hurt you to have one in an office somewhere.