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AT&T To Decommission Pay Phones
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.'"
Now where is Superman supposed to change?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
..Because there are cellphone everywhere? But if you find yourself without cellphone in a situation,would some stranger lend you his for a call you want to make?
Oh its about profit...ok..
Wincopy
Oh look, a violent crime. Better go to the nearest payphone and report it so I don't get roped in to the case just 'cos I'm concerned about someone being beaten to a pulp.
Oh, no payphone.
Bell did not invent the telephone. It was Antonio Meucci!
When I moved to Atlanta in summer of 2004, it was the lack of pay phones in Midtown that finally made me purchase a cell phone. Had there been easily accessible pay phones in the city, I would most likely still rely on them. I wonder whether we'll see a significant increase in cell phone subscription now, or whether there aren't enough crazy luddites like me left anymore.
It's about phreaking time.
At least according to AT&T, the phones aren't just going to disappear. What the article says is that AT&T is getting out of the pay phone business, turning some or all of their phones over to independent operators.
The British Telecom phone booths look really nice not to mention all the handy hooker ads inside :-)
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
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.
My 76 year old dad has neither a cell phone nor a computer, and he likes it that way!
I'm reminded of my mother's dad, who still used the outhouse even after my Uncle installed plumbing and a bathroom. "I lived [n] years without [plumbing/cell phones] and I don't need one now!
I can just see when I hit 90. "Damn it, I lived 90 years without a matter replicator or a transporter and I don't need one now!"
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I remember when you just had to push some buttons on a little box that you bought from that guy who always wore a trench coat, and the calls were free ;-)
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Bow-ties are cool.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck