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There Are Still 100,000 Pay Phones In the US (cnn.com)
According to the FCC, there are only about 100,000 phone booths left in the United States, and about a fifth of those are in New York. The number has decreased rapidly over the last couple decades as cellphones have been adopted by 95% of Americans. CNN reports of how these remaining pay phones still remain a steady business for some of the 1,100 companies operating them across the country: Pay phone providers reported $286 million in revenue in 2015, according to the most recent FCC report. They can still be profitable, particularly in places where there isn't cell phone or landline coverage, said Tom Keane, president of Pacific Telemanagement Services. Keane's company operates 20,000 pay phones around the country. "We have phones in Yosemite Valley that are extremely busy when there's not snow on the ground," he said. Victor Rollo said he is still making money off his 170 phones in the San Diego area. Rollo declined to say how much, but he believes pay phones are a lifeline for people who don't have other options and are valuable during emergencies or natural disasters. Rollo says he evaluates how many calls are made on the phones every month, how far away they are from each other, and how much his expenses are per month to determine whether to keep them in the ground. Phones in hospitals and along the border, where cell coverage is weak, are some of his most profitable ones.
Its easy to profit when your customers are jail and prison inmates with no means of making or receiving calls except on $3.00 per minute pay phones that the prison gets a kickback from.
I expect most of their value is in the ads on the side of the phone booth.
These booths are for the use of our paying customers.
Please limit your changing time if others are waiting.
-- Thank you.
Have gnu, will travel.
I use an acoustic coupler modem to a payphone. That is how I avoid being tracked. The only disadvantage is my bittorrent throughput is really low.
*Fingering away on my iShiney*, "What's a pay phone?"
That's already happened in Scandinavia... in 2015 they disappeared in Sweden, 01.01.2016 it ended in Norway, 13.12.2017 the last one disappeared in Denmark. Those who grow up today will never have seen a working phone booth.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I have a payphone - it's mounted on my office wall. I don't have the keys for it, and it's not connected, but to me, it's a fine nexus of pleasant memories. Most pertinently, I remember hanging out in a phone booth in rural Pennsylvania (just north of Marshall's creek on then-route 209, now "Milford Road" since the bungled Tock's Island Dam project federal land takings) with my girlfriend as a teenager, while we waited for the rain to ease up or stop. I've been fond of phone booths, and their pay phones, ever since.
So when a friend, who works for the local telco/ISP, mentioned they were about to destroy a whole bunch of them, I asked for one, and surprisingly enough, they willingly handed one over.
And there it hangs, just dripping nostalgia.
Every once in a while, I get the urge to dig in with power tools and soldering iron and turn it into a working phone, but then I realize I don't actually want anyone to call me on a landline, ever, and the the urge subsides. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The last hand-cranked telephone was disconnected in the 1980s., decades after they were common. IIRC, The last telegram was sent in India less than 10 years ago. There's always a long tail of old tech that had a large installed base.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Those who grow up today will never have seen a working phone booth.
Obsolete tech can often have a long tail. The world's last telegraph service just recently shut down. Fax machines are still around (mostly used by lawyers, doctors, and governments). Typewriters are still being manufactured. You can even buy brand new floppy drives.
I saw "Red Sparrow" last week. It seemed incongruous that the spies have smartphones, but still exchanged secrets on a big stack of floppy disks instead of a single thumb drive ... or maybe Dropbox. Spoiler alert: That is not the only implausible scene in the movie.
These things can't die soon enough, but with it being the only way certain types of document communications are allowed (certain medical and legal records), we'll be stuck with them for quite awhile longer.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
It's a vicious cycle. With early adopters adopting cell phones, fewer pay phones remain in operation. This decline in pay phone availability causes a cell phone to become even more of a necessity for those who need to occasionally make an urgent call* and would previously carry change to deposit in the nearest pay phone. This leads even those who lag behind in adoption of new recurring services to get a cell phone.
But some people are claiming that a cell phone is still a luxury, even one on a prepaid plan for $5 per month or less. And I can't really tell whether all of them are sarcastic or not. damn_registrars thought cell phones were still a luxury in 2015 just as they had been before they were invented. This AC would turn down jobs in order not to have to give out a cell phone number. ncc74656 thinks planning a whole day in advance built discipline in people before easy access to phones was common. Others, such as this AC and Zero__Kelvin, appear to claim that there exists enough "herd immunity" of cellular subscription among the population that in an urgent situation, one should expect to be able to bum a call off someone else.
Who's right?
* "Urgent" is more general than "emergency".
One favorite location for ripoff payphones is airports, where even a local call is several dollars.
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The floppy diskettes were from the Government. Meaning, the political/military part of the government. I was surprised they weren't 5-1/4" diskettes.
In some cases, removed pay phones have been restored by request: Pay phone at ranger station near Big Four Ice Caves is reinstalled.
And who remembers terms like COCOT?
I bought a coffee from a bloke whose cafe was an old phone box (like the Tardis, except double width) in Edinburgh when I was there a few years ago which was cool.
The phone booths where I live are all wi-fi hotspots now, if they're still there.
That would have been a former Police Box (of which the Tardis is modelled on a variant of) not a Phone Box which would not be big enough.
The "new" Norway full of Ahmeds and Tyrons won't be so successful on this metric.
Ahmed Behring Breivik being one fine example, right.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
To collect on voice prints and numbers called.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
A couple of years ago I was thinking about how payphones had gone the way of the dodo, then I realized there was one right in front of me. They're in most BART stations. They seem to be less than 20 years old, and in working order, though I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually use one. I can't imagine who's actually paying to maintain them.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
There's punishment too. I know, I know, thats not a trendy thing to say today where we must treat criminals as poor misguided souls no matter how heinous their crimes. But hey, some people think punishment is kind of important because otherwise there's little deterrant and no natural justice for victims. But what do those facist dinosaurs know eh? /sarcasm
Was a 6.5536 MHz crystal.
Anyone?
I have a Western Electric 1D2 pay phone. It's hooked up in my office. https://flic.kr/p/5Duj1k
Yes, you may well be correct now I think back. I was just glad they found a new use for it instead of just getting rid of it.