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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?"
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.
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.
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.
You also need to remember to keep a non-cordless phone around to use with it. If the power is out and all you have is cordless (as many people do these days), you're still out of luck.
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.
That's not necessarily true. Just because VoIP is a kludge compared to TDM or cell switched services, does not mean that the backbone equipment to do it will not be protected by the same backup systems as TDM or cell switches.
However, the tendency not to use POTS copper on new installs would mean that new payphone rollouts would likely not be as protected, not being powered by the POTS lines but rather by a site-local power source, which could even be just grid. So what you say may happen for newer last mile setups, but existing POTS lines would likely be tied to a reliable backbone, VoIP or not.
Someone had to do it.
That's all fine and good, but why not just provide a tower with a bunch of powered USB ports for people to stand around and plug into. It can be solar powered with a battery for backup. No power ties would be needed and no hardline. If you really wanted to wire it up, put a few low power cell phone antennas/radios on the top that could easily be replaced when new technology permits. This way you solve the existing infrastructure problem of having tens of thousands of people jamming regular cell towers and give people a place to charge up in emergencies.
The thing is... people have their own displays they carry around with them now. If you wanted to provide a local service to them you'd best serve them by allowing wifi connections and directing them to a web page with that info.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Historically speaking it's the people that band together and help each other in emergencies that do best.
Sounds like a reasonable justification to me. You called and had them replace the copper with fiber so you could get internet faster, then you want them to put the copper back? It's not economically justifiable.
It's usually not justifiable to remove the copper at all. NYC has dead copper in the same conduits as the fiber, some dating back to the 1800's [with paper insulation]. With the price of copper these days, that may change in the future.
At some point in transitioning, they'll have also pulled the copper distribution system from the CO to your neighborhood and put in fiber, so it would be a really large expense to run a copper pair all the way just for you.
It may not go all the way to the CO but only to the local pedestal [where fiber-to-the-curb becomes copper].
Maybe the mistake was going with the telco for VoIP when there are other providers who aren't pseudo-monopolies and don't need to pull your old copper lines?
In CA, sonic.net [not shilling] is running fiber-to-the-home in some municipalities. They are [probably] just adding fiber in parallel because the copper is actually owned by AT&T.
Actually, copper ownership is a bit murky. IIRC, when AT&T wired much of America in the late 1950's, it did so under a consent degree, paid for with U.S. tax dollars, so the copper could be considered a publicly owned resource.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there