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AT&T To Decommission Pay Phones

Posted by Zonk on from the death-by-cell-phone dept.

oahazmatt writes "According to MarketWatch, AT&T said that its pay phones will be phased out over the next year. A company spokeswoman declined to say how much revenue its pay-phone business generated, but the number is small and declining. 'The first public pay-telephone station was set up in 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the talking device. The first coin-operated pay phone was installed in Hartford, Conn., in 1889. For decades after the pay phone's invention, many Americans relied on them because of the expense and difficulty in obtaining reliable home service. Only after World War II did the telephone become a household necessity.'"

11 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. not a surprise by networkBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Death of an era, really.
    As TFA says though, almost anyone and everyone has a wireless handset. I recent switched to a PP cell myself.
    That's the real key... Pay phones were anonymous, with Pre-paid you can pay cas for the phone ans sim, using bogus info where needed. You can still be invisible.
    -nB

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  2. wireless access points any one? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    keep the phone add dsl to the line and a wifi connection - good to go.

  3. Profit != Bad by p0tat03 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    People are treating ATT like the scum of the Earth here, which they may be in their mobile business, but I can't see why expecting to break even is such an evil goal.

    Pay phones here in Canada are up to $1 a call now, ridiculous, when it was a quarter merely a few years before. The downturn in usage means increased cost per call for the few people that still use them, which drives a cycle that forces everyone to get some sort of cell phone.

    Both my brother (an academic) and my mother have pay-as-you-go plans, which cost them about $120 a year. That's really not too bad, considering they're light users. They enjoy the convenience of a cell phone, and also the security from being able to call emergency services wherever they may be, as opposed to having to locate the nearest (dwindling number) payphones.

    I simply do not see pay phones as having any further use to our society. They were important pieces of technology from a bygone era, that's all.

  4. Re:Good by michrech · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you have a land line at home and access to the telephone at work, then you really can get by without a cell phone. But then, say, when you are out on the road and you need to change plans with friends, you find that you need one. It used to be that you could use a pay phone on such an occasion. I don't think having land lines at work and home and occasionally using a pay phone means that you are poor. That's what "pay as you go" phones are for.
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  5. Payphones became worthless when... by dave562 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...they muted the speaker so the red box wouldn't work anymore.

  6. Re:No longer required.. by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In Finland there is an excellent telecommunications infrastructure, and yet mobile phones are necessities. For example, some new apartment blocks lack doorbells, since when you reach the outside door it is expected that you can phone your acquaintance to let him know you are waiting to enter. Payphones were generally phased out years ago, with only a handful left in the very centre of Helsinki for tourists. Then there is the whole social issue, sometimes people just don't want to deal with you if you don't have a mobile.

  7. Presumably by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One could buy all the payphones, stick a wireless access point in them and an ADSL port on the other end of the line.

    Hmmmm... With the dollar going off the cliff I might just be able to afford it.

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  8. Worse yet how will car run down trapped victims by gmezero · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sigh... yet another classic movie cliche goes the way of the DoDo.

  9. Re:Good by BoberFett · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I use a pay as you go phone from TMobile. After years of paying $50/mo or more to Verizon I smacked myself in the head for being such a dolt. I reviewed my bills and found that I use less than 100 minutes a month. I fill my phone with the highest cost card ($100) which gives me 1000 minutes that last a year. At $0.10/mi, I spend ~$10/mo. for a cell phone. For light users pay as you go makes sense.

  10. They've been phasing them out for some time now... by Desert+Tripper · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ... starting with the most famous phone booth in history, the Mojave Phone Booth. I had the privilege of making two pilgrimages to this phone and answering it during the height of its popularity in 10/99. Sadly, a few months later, the Park Service (or, more accurately, the fascist spoilsport in charge of the Mojave National Preserve) had enough of the innocent fun and ordered AT&T (then called Pacific Bell in the area) to remove it, which they happily did. Not only that, in true politician form, she created a nasty letter itemizing all of the bad things that were going on out there -- 90% of which were fabrications and exaggerations.

    The feeling of being out in a completely isolated, absolutely silent, gorgeous desert valley, yet receiving communications from all over the world, was indescribable. The 25+-mile, largely open-wire line even made strange pinging and popping sounds while one talked on it, which I later learned were distant lightning strikes being picked up on what amounted to a giant VLF antenna! I would imagine that someone would have heard similar sounds by hooking a speaker to an early transcontinental telegraph line.

    Leave it to the government to destroy a very positive and innocent phenomenon that served to bring people together. I imagine the copper thieves would have pilfered the wire eventually anyway, but the Park Service's action was premature, selfish and uncalled for.

    The death (murder?) of the MPB is a sad story, and was just the beginning of the end of the pay phone in general.

  11. Re:No longer required.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The landline service for the student apartments (some 2000 people live in Otaniemi) at Helsinki University of Technology was decommisioned this year because no one was using it. I wonder if anyone bothers wiring new buildings for landline anymore (except maybe for DSL).