Slashdot Mirror
Is It Time To Commit To Ongoing Payphone Availability?
jenningsthecat writes "Public payphones seem headed the way of the dinosaur, as noted here on Slashdot 10 years ago, and again by the CBC earlier this year. Reasons typically cited for their demise are falling usage, (thanks to the ubiquitous cell phone), and rising maintenance costs. But during the recent disaster in NYC caused by Hurricane Sandy public payphones proved their worth, allowing people to stay in contact in spite of the widespread loss of both cellular service and the electricity required to charge mobile devices. In light of this news, at least one Canadian news outlet is questioning the wisdom of scrapping payphones. Should we in North America make sure that public pay phones will always be widely available? (After all, it's not as though they don't have additional value-added uses). And, should their continued existence be dependent on corporations whose primary duty is to their shareholders, rather than to the average citizen?"
This is one good reason why a landline (not VOIP) is still good to keep around if you can get it for less than $10 a month. A lot more reliable during diasters than your cellphone (towers down, your battery dead).
If the disaster is big enough then there will likely be a police officers or paramedics on every block anyway, which is what you'd want the phones to be used for anyway. We don't need emergency payphones for non-critical use, including people calling home to tell their relatives that they're ok.
It's time to both beef up the communications infrastructure to support reliable operation and to commit to helping your neighbors with access to things like a telephone, should you have one that works, during a major catastrophe.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
On a couple of occasions I've had car problems when on remote rural freeways in California, and been able to use the emergency phones that the state places within walking distance of pretty much every point along the freeway. Even if pay phones aren't commercially viable, having phones available for emergencies does make sense.
What about keeping them but enhancing their usability? For instance, combine them with other forms of information services - city info, etc. Or perhaps some corporate partnerships like movie rentals. The phone part would be separate to keep that available if someone else was searching for the latest Star Wars flick...
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
This is a common problem: emergency and safety systems are completely pointless 99% of the time... until you have an emergency, at which point they're indispensable. It's like the bail-out bag in the closet with the first-aid kit and other necessities for an emergency: for years you wonder why you keep it because you never use it, until that day you didn't see coming when the fire department knocks on the door saying the fire's jumped the line and you've got 15 minutes before it gets here (which has happened here twice since I moved here, so not a theoretical example). Myself, I'd keep pay phones around as one of those necessary emergency expenses, the kind of thing you know you've needed in the past and will need in the future but that you won't have time to get deployed if you wait until you do need it.
I suspect it isn't payphones, per se, that need to be maintained, but rather, the reliability of the wireline network that needs to be maintained. We traded nearly 6-nines reliability of POTS for ubiquitous wireless communication. Good cell coverage is hard under normal circumstance, but in a disaster scenario, nearly impossible.
Maybe after a disaster, communications trucks need to be rolled in to provide service. More than just a COW (cell on wheels), it would provide WiFi and wireline service (for those without devices) as well as power to recharge devices.
Finally, I don't have to lug this cell phone around!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWIhBO7Jc4
If payphones are gone then how could someone make anonymous, untraceable calls (if need be)? Sure, they could trace it to that particular phone but by the time anyone gets there the caller will be long gone.
Instead of maintaining a system that is practically obsolete we should put the effort into making the newer system more robust.
How about building pico-cells into emergency vehicles with some sort of dedicated wireless backhaul? Figure out how to queue access to cell phones so that even if such a system can only handle 5-10 voice calls at once (due to backhaul bandwidth limits), anyone with a basic cell phone can virtually "wait in line" until it is their turn to talk.
It doesn't have to be limited to emergency vehicles, we could build stand-alone units too that could be battery powered and deployed fairly quickly.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Superman is finding it harder and harder to find a place to change.
Maybe portable cell towers (with recharging docks for the phones?) would be better. Or for that matter, a kiosk where a Red Cross worker lets people use a satellite phone for 3 minutes per turn. The problem with fixed emergency infrastructure like phone boxes is they may get wiped out, and they're sitting unused almost always.
Yes, because we are all descended from telephone sanitation engineers.
Phone companies used to be able to afford not making much on pay phones until their lucrative long distance business was cannibalized by Sprint, etc.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Okay, your cell phone phone is dead. Zombies have taken out the cell towers. It's an urban apocalypse. You're surrounded by evil, and low on gas. And there are no pay phones. How do you get in touch with the mad scientist 500 miles away to get the cure?
It's easy guys: Walk into a commercial building with power and ask to use the phone. In fact, many without power will still have a few POTS lines powered (read: Not digital); but you may have to hunt for them, so if you're trapped in an apparently "dead" building with zombies and cthulu beasts outside, patience and a flashlight will save the day. Just avoid the restrooms.
I know I'm being sarcastic here, but seriously guys -- if you're ever in a true emergency situation, stop and think. House flooded? No fresh water? Think about where fresh water might be -- stop panic'ing and really think. Ding! Toilet reservoir. People get all manner of stupid in a crisis because something they used to depend on suddenly isn't there. Guys, you've got millions of years of evolution that has taught you to be adaptable.. but not a lick of those years is going to do you any good until you calm down.
We don't need pay phones. We need to teach people to be self-reliant, instead of hiding under their desks. The government and emergency services may not always be there for you. Neither will any of your modern conveniences. But there is nothing you need to survive that can't be found within a few miles of wherever you are in an urban environment. Food. Shelter. Water. Medical supplies. And if someone's injured, know first aid! It's not rocket science; Take a course today. And keep a small bug-out bag in your car. Less than $100 and some planning ahead of time and you can not only survive just about any catastrophe but also help the people around you.
Everyone should be doing this. Don't rely on your fucking cell phone, or having access to any phone at all. Don't rely on the government. Rely on you. In an emergency, that's the only person you can rely on.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I couldn't tell you where ANY pay phones around here are. Heck, where you do see a pay phone, it's usually in a neighborhood where you're likely to get mugged or shot if you tried to use it anyway.
C'mon people, get rid of the regulated payphones now, and during the next disaster, Free Market PayPhones (tm) will just pop up everywhere like daisies. (Of course it'll be $100 per minute call, but hey, that's what the Free Market is for)
Seriously, the National Guard should have a bunch of communications trucks that can form a mesh network after an event like this. They should be able to connect to regular cell phones, prioritizing 911 calls, then allowing some WiFi traffic to move out of a disaster zone.
Even so, a pay phone is still useful if your cellphone is lost or stolen. Perhaps we should bring back big blue police call boxes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardis
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Yeah, that's not actually how the quote goes.
"Should we hold onto because it's been around forever?" - Pay phones: The complaint is that they're too expensive to maintain, given that everyone uses cellphones. - Package-based cable TV: The complaint is that you get programming you don't care about, or are unable to pay for just the shows you want to watch. - Broadcast radio: Too much goddamn advertising, given the shitty "top 40s" playlists and often personality-less/PC personalities between commercial breaks.
I'm re-posting from the older thread linked above about NY's plans to use payphones as WiFi hotspots:
On a related note, have you ever wondered what that Police Public Call Box thing is that The Doctor uses to travel through space and time? I used to wonder too. It wasn't until I went to Edinburgh that I saw them and other objects that looked like them. I remember jumping out of my seat and saying "There's a Tardis!"
Well apparently they had a phone accessible from the outside that the public could use to call the cops in an emergency. Cops would have access to the inside where they could go in and hang their hat, hold a prisoner while help came, and effectively use it as a mini police station. Some of them remain and have been re-purposed for other uses like coffee shops or news stands. There were a lot of designs and didn't seem to standardize like the classic red phone box did.
Cities like Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool have updated the concept with "help points", little computerized kiosks that are under CCTV surveillance and have a direct line to the police. It'd be cool if they could introduce the modern functionality but contain it in the form of the old 1929 Mackenzie Trench design that was popularized by Doctor Who.
The moral of the story is that once infrastructure is taken out it's very hard to put back in. If you leave it in place, even when it stops being immediately useful, it can find a use later when some new trend (coffee shops) or new technology makes it useful again. When the old Police Boxes were going out of service, the WWW was a long way off and nobody could have foreseen their reincarnation as help points.
There's also the matter of heritage value. I remember when the K6 phone box was so ubiquitous in the UK that nobody would have considered them as a collector's item. In fact I remember, when the one beside our house had a rotary phone in it, that they were quite dingy inside and not well maintained. They were rusty and the glass was always dirty and smudged. The rectangular plastic and stainless steel ones that came later were a lot more pleasant to use, but they didn't have the same character. But the K6 still has its fans. If the inside were as comfortable as a modern design then I'm sure they could be adapted to a modern use as well.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
They already did.
How else are we supposed to ensure that everybody has a quick way out of the Matrix should the need arise?
my mom spent the hurricane and flood in an ocean facing condo with a dumb phone. she's now going to get an iphone or Galaxy S3
the voice service was crap but the texting and data mostly stayed up even in the worst hit areas. texting i'm OK is good enough and there are lots of other features she will get
and payphones would have been useless as well since the water was high enough to destroy them
Cell phones are great, but having a payphone option definitely comes in handy. I was at a large public event (a St Patrick's Day thing) a while back and had had a bit too much to drink and got separated from the group I was with. Had no idea where I was at and for some reason (I'm guessing just tower overload) my cell phone wasn't working. I kept trying to dial out for another hour or so but the battery eventually died. It was around 3am in the morning and virtually everything was closed.
Long story short, I was able to eventually find a payphone, call a cab, and get back to the hotel. Cell phones are great, but it doesn't even take a natural disaster to run into a scenario when you really need something else to fall back on.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Just add an easement to your city's antenna tower permits that will allow people to put in ham radio repeaters with autopatches.
Individuals will pay for their own transceivers for free (as they have for about a century) and hams will move traffic that can be done simplex to other frequencies.
There are a dozen repeaters in reach of my commute to work. There are naturally in places that don't flood and hams generally have great battery backups connected to them. Further, they don't require the phone systems to work at all. I can reach any ham in the city with mine, no phone line involved.
Folks that are good at this may in fact be near you already:
http://www.qsl.net/races/links.html
And these folk can get you started:
http://www.arrl.org/home
The payphone thing is part of a much larger problem. Forty years ago, the entire U.S,. phone system (except for a few independent pockets) was owned by a single company. That company did a pretty good job of maintaining a robust, disaster-resistant communication infrastructure. But it also stifled competition and innovation.
In the deregulation-happy 80s, we got rid of that official monopoly. This has had many positive results (hard to imagine the modern Internet being built in such a restrictive environment) but also meant that nobody was responsible for making sure the system always works.
I've always been slightly curious as to how difficult it would actually be to equip all cellphones with the chips and antenna necessary to communicate with something like the Iridium satellite network.
Barring something truly apocalyptic, it's not like the satellites are going to go down.
I suspect it isn't payphones, per se, that need to be maintained
Payphones are getting vandalized more now then before.
Probably in part because they are not as busy, so there is more opportunity, and because the vandals have cell phones so they aren't screwing themselves over...
If you had a working cellphone, you could instead have a microcell and emergency powerable charging ports. No need to for infrastructure to support collecting cash and able to be used by more than one person at a time and easy to armor against casual vandalism.
Historically speaking it's the people that band together and help each other in emergencies that do best.
The higher the technology, the bigger fall when it fails in a disaster.
you cant overengineer everything.
keeping around low tech backups is never bad, and is cheaper too.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A vending machine selling disposable paper cell phones for $1 would be an adequate replacement.
Except that's not the way it works. The telcos want the wired land lines to go away because of the overhead. That means that they have policies that make it difficult, if not impossible, to keep your wired line.
For example, most telcos won't activate service on any form of fiber-based connection without permanently severing your ability to get a dial tone on the original wired-line service at that address. So you have a choice: high speed Internet service above DSL speeds or wired voice. You can't have both unless you have a multi-unit dwelling and can add the high speed Internet service to the second unit.
For many people, it has nothing to do with saving a few bucks.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm afraid there's no way to hide one of these inside an iPhone. Not yet anyways.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
New York decided long long ago to bury all utility lines, and this is why the pay phones continued to work. Most areas in this country have overhead utilities, so in the case of a hurricane the phone lines would fail.
Getting rid of phone booths is all part of a plot by Torchwood to make it easier to monitor time travelers: First, they eliminate police boxes so they can spot The Doctor right away if he shows up, and now they're targeting Bill and Ted, too. The only reason they aren't buying up DeLoreans is that Marty's got destroyed - BUT HAVE YOU NOTICED HOW HARD IT IS TO BUY FLYING STEAM LOCOMOTIVES?!
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
I can recite exactly two phone numbers from memory: mine, and my Dad's. The latter is because he still has the same phone number I grew up with. So if I didn't have my cell phone, and power was out everywhere, I wouldn't know whom to call anyway.
Not when the emergency involves a hurricane knocking over trees which then fall on and break those twisted-pair lines. Then a cell phone is going to have a better chance of getting to 911.
Not everywhere. I had dry loop DSL, and the phone line did not even provide power to light up the buttons on my phone. The landline was physically disconnected from the voice port at the CO.
So New York is flooded, power is out, and you can drop quarter into a payphone to call someone that cares?
I think this speaks more of the fact we need better power and wireless systems. How can landline service survive when everything else is knocked out? How about getting the people that invented landline phone service to invest a little time and effort making power lines and wireless services a little more resilient.
Also, I think its time that people invent a cell phone that can last more than a day on a charge. I mean 40 years later and my wireless phone still wont work past a day in spite of all the supposed innovation in battery and computer technology.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
On the other hand, for real emergencies 911 works even on a "dead" twisted-pair line.
If there is no battery on your "twisted pair line", then there is no way for the phone to signal to the CO that it needs dial tone, and the reason for no battery is most likely because your pair has been disconnected from the CO altogether. Most likely, the pair out of the CO that goes to your local distribution box has been put in use for someone else.
I'd like to know how you think you can make any calls on such a line, much less 911 in an emergency.
So you have a choice: high speed Internet service above DSL speeds from the telco, who wants more money than it's worth and would result in reduced redundancy or wired voice.
FTFY.
If the headline is a question, the answer is always "No".
Yeah, that's not actually how the quote goes.
It's obviously meant to refer to Betteridge's Law of Headlines- and whether the AC's paraphrasing it accurate or not, it certainly misses the both the spirit and the purpose of the original quote. (For those unaware of Betteridge, and- more importantly- those who think they have, but don't get why it doesn't apply here, read the linked article. Betteridge's Law doesn't refer to open questions like the one above, but to article headlines based on an attention-getting premise that there is insufficient evidence to back up as facts, e.g. "Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.)".)
Then again, while unfortunate, it's not surprising that Betteridge's Law has become the latest insightful observation/rule-of-thumb to fall victim to overuse and misuse by lazy posters who haul it out at every opportunity as a canned substitute for real insight or intelligence. Anyone could have seen that coming.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
...voting machines... they are bound to be more secure....
Understand that the reason phone sevice seems to have gotten cheaper is because we are moving from heavily regulated and tariffed landline connections to far less regulated cell phone and VOIP connections.
For example, the CO for land line connections is a building filled with batteries because they are required to supply the 48 VDC uninterrupted to land line phones to ensure they are available without interruption. No such guarantee of service is present for either VOIP or cell phones. With VOIP you are at the mercy of so many things that it would be impossible to provide any guarantee of service. With cell phones when the UPS for the cell tower runs out, that tower is down until the power comes back on. No guarantees whatsoever.
Could cell phone be made to be reliable? Doubtful. To have the same type of service guarantee as for land lines every cell tower would need a diesel generator and at least one person on duty at all times. Not going to happen.
Could VOIP be made reliable? If we are talking about the cable system type of VOIP, then it could but it would require lots of equipment that today doesn't even have a UPS have full battery capability so that the network would continue to operate in the face of an extended power outage. If we are talking about Vonage or similar services the answer is that it could not be made any more reliable than the flakiest piece of equipment between the telephone and where it joins the telephone network. That is going involve far more network equipment than you would believe and not everyone is going to have an interest in keeping their entire data center up in the face of a power outage.
I think the era of reliable telephone communications is just about over. People are abandoning the reliable network in favor of unreliable alternatives in droves and there really isn't any going back.
There's two things a good security guard must have on his belt at all times - a can of pepper spray, and when things get messy, a fanny-pack of quarters to call the police.
Get rid of the old payphones and install satellite phones...
OR
Make the electrical grid and cell phone towers more robust to disasters and conduct system stress tests.
Those posts in Germany that offer WiFi service are powered from the mains. No power = no service.
Not good for any sort of disaster use.
When I still had a land line, I specifically *did* *not* have an unlimited line. As most people called me on it, and I called out on my cell phone, I think it was $6 or $7 per month. Plus another $2/month so it was unlisted.
It got such little use after ~5-6 years, I gave it up, though. And now that Verizon's doing the whole fibre thing, if I tried to start it back up, they'd probably try to convert me, with one of those boxes that they *claim* will stay up for 48hrs after power loss, but has been shown to not even make it 24hrs. (not that it really matters when you're down for 4 days)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Pay phones are a waste of space. How about making cell service a emergency service, and protect it from floods, earthquakes, fires... etc. Also, create emergency charging stations in public facilities for people to charge their phones if the outage is prolonged. Communications are a huge thing to have in a disaster. A pay phone is not going to help you if you are disabled and stuck on the 10th floor in an apartment building. People used payphones because the cellular network failed.
What's the alternative to the telco for above-DSL home Internet, especially in areas with no desirable cable television provider?
Cell phone service could be made more reliable than land line phones.
Land line phones are vulnerable because of all of those wires strung on poles which get knocked down in windstorms. Cell phone service doesn't have all of those vulnerable wires strung all over the place. They have either a well protected (underground) cable or a microwave link.
What is needed is power to the cell phone towers and the phone companies have been fighting against a requirement that they have backup power. However, if the cell towers had reliable power, they would be more reliable than land line service (which has been required to have backup batteries). Seems like a logical requirement to have cell tower power backup.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
If a city or town wants to provide free calling in emergencies, that's easy enough to do. Just open up places with calling. The real issue is do we as a society want to maintain the POTS infrastructure or let the system collapse and move towards internet and cell only. That's both more expensive and a crucial prerequisite.
In addition, I would drop the payphone and instead create a payable WIFI set-up on a land-line, that allows you to download a voip app.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ah, thanks for adding to the discussion to let everyone know you're passive aggressive and read too much Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand? You got the wrong end of the political spectrum here. I'm a socialist.
As such, I believe in helping anyone who has fulfilled their part of the bargain: "From each according to ability; to each according to need". Not those Ayn Randers who believe that a buck saved is a human right.
You have brilliantly illuminated the viewpoint, moral character, and intellectual capacities of the leadership of the United States of America.
No more need be said.
especially in areas with no desirable cable television provider?
If you automatically discard one provider because you don't like them, you've made a conscious choice to do so. They still offer a technically feasible and useful solution to your problem, you've just decided not to count them for political or social reasons.
So, the "undesirable" cable television provider is still an alternative solution to the problem of losing your copper pair when getting "faster than DSL" internet. Tethered 3/4g, wireless, satellite, cable; all are potential other sources.
It's like trying to claim that GM doesn't make cars, when the fact is they make cars but you don't like GM as a company. Personally, I dislike the telco* more than the cable company, but want a copper pair for resiliency, too.
* they lied to me about static addresses being included in the DSL package, and couldn't manage to install it on the correct line when they managed to do it. Then they lied to the PUC when I complained about them lying about the static addresses. Most recently, they ran me around for 45 minutes over a $0.75 charge for a three-way call that couldn't possibly have been made from my phone, repeatedly claiming that "the computer says the call was made and that proves it was."
If you automatically discard one provider because you don't like them, you've made a conscious choice to do so.
As opposed to discarding a provider because I'm not willing to move into their service area. I was under the impression that there were places that could get fiber from the phone company but couldn't get cable.
What bargain? Pay taxes yes, but paying some company a extra for a phone line which may or may not still work after disaster is a bit harsh.
You could as easily say no you can't share my food because you didn't stock up even if you had plenty. Someone using your phone line will not detract significantly from your survival so if you say no you are just being a prat.
The fact is now our communication systems are changing we should simply make them reliable in a disaster not stick some outmoded communication devise on every corner.
.
Even in a power outage, landlines often keep working while the power is out (at least if you have a hard-wired landline, cordless phones at home will need a home-based UPS battery backup system). Any students or professors who depended on cellular only access could NOT get through in the first 8 hours or so of the quake, whereas the landline students COULD get through, and helped the students without landlines by letting them use the phones.
.
I believe the standard excuse for police to pull out public payphones is to label them as a "hazard" used by drug dealers who can make phone calls without being traced. I've seen pay phones disappear from beside the 7-11's and the little mini-malls you see all over southern california. It's ridiculous to get rid of them when they can be a valuable lifeline in case of an emergency.
The most reliable and robust communication systems are often the simplest.. In disaster zones, n-way radio is often the most reliable electronic communications. perhaps cellphones should have a p2p mode that kicks in when it can't get on the cellnet..
companies to the same standards we do with the land lines. LL must withstand 80% usage peak, while cell phone networks can fold at 50%.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Emergency phones. A simple virtually indestructible phone that runs on solar power and normally uses the standard cell network for calling, but in times of disaster can utilize shortwave, video frequencies to assure that people everywhere can remain in communication and have access to emergency resources as they may be available.
Most recently, they ran me around for 45 minutes over a $0.75 charge for a three-way call that couldn't possibly have been made from my phone, repeatedly claiming that "the computer says the call was made and that proves it was."
You should take heart in the thought that your call cost them way more than $0.75 to deal with, even if they did not reverse the charges. You provided a public service to the rest of us by your actions. I sometimes get a good feeling when I get a robo-call and put it on speaker phone while I do something else until their system hangs up - the longer they are on line with me, the higher their cost-per-call is, and the less time to they have to use their system calling others.
You could as easily say no you can't share my food because you didn't stock up even if you had plenty.
Indeed.
And you can't have my wood either if you had the ability and opportunity, but decided to not replenish your wood pile in order to save a buck or not have to do the dirty work.
If a tornado took it, or you couldn't afford it, I'll gladly share, but if it was your own conscious decisions that caused you to be without something vital, you deserve the consequences.
I would gladly feed or warm children who can't be blamed for their parents' choices, but watching some calculating bastard who lost their bet starve or freeze would cause me no lack of sleep.
If he survives, he learns a valuable lesson, and if not, well, there's one less stupid in the world.
Charity is for those who deserve compassion. Not those who have money but choose to ignore precautions in order to save a buck, and rely on their fellow men for help when they should have been helping, not helped.
The fact is now our communication systems are changing we should simply make them reliable in a disaster not stick some outmoded communication devise on every corner.
The fact is that that outmoded communication technology kept me with both phone and internet for a week+ long power outage even when my cable and cell phone both were dead. My neighbors were forced to rely on modern methods like waiting at the gas station for hours and driving quite a distance just to let people know they were still alive.
I have a can opener that works without electricity too, a battery powered AM radio, and even a kettle. They may be outdated compared to electric can openers, Vue-cup coffee makers and Sirius XM, but I can rely on them.
That doesn't mean I can't also have the latest and greatest, but if I relied on new tech in a country with a power grid from the days of Charlemagne, I'd be a fool.
Why carry a phone at all? Even cell phones are ridiculous.
a) You look like an idiot saying 'can you hear me now' everywhere you go.
b) If you complain about wanting to be more social, or are depressed, or take anti depressants. My bet is (1) you use your cell phone to filter your phone calls (2) you act 'busy' in public when someone you're not wanting to approach you acts like they are.. That phone threatens your life. Imagine what life without the cell phone would be like. Now try it.
I dont use phones anymore. I have a computer for my phone calls. It's free for my phone calls, and easier to play games on.
I have an analog watch. It's a Walmart watch. $19.99. It glows in the dark, and has Mickey Mouse on it. It's gotten me laid more than once.
I have a daytimer. So when I dropped my phone into the toilet last time. I flushed. it, saying screw it. I no longer lose my numbers because I'm not talking over the toilet and I'm also not a threat to other people on the road when I'm driving because I'm listening to new music on the radio instead.
Really. Pay phones are nice, convenient, more so than cell phones. But let's be honest. There's nothing pressing I've ever had happened that has required a cell phone or pay phone for immediacy, where I couldnt go knock on a stranger's door and ask them for help... You can't imagine how welcoming people are, and how surprisingly fearless people still are when someone asks for help and a phone call.
It's a great way to meet people. And who knows. You could meet your next boyfriend or girlfriend by randomly popping by someone's door and saying 'can i use your phone?
Now, if I only could convince a nude beautiful woman who did it as a joke (and not running from a rapist!) to do this, I'd swear I was in heaven!
You're making the incorrect assumption that the only reasons to reject one provider are political or social. There are also companies that:
And so on. There may be very valid technical reasons why you have to reject one provider or another, and none of those reasons are particularly uncommon.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oh, yeah. I also forgot the sadly still common mother of all technical reasons:
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"Should we in North America make sure that public pay phones will always be widely available?"
We the taxpayers? No.
In Reason We Trust