This is something I’ve pondered for a long time. Obviously, not everyone has a cell phone, but enough people have them that I don’t think there’s much of a use for payphones anymore. It used to be that you had to use one every time you needed to call anyone in any place where there wasn’t a phone you could use for free, which was often. Now, cell phones take care of that need.
I’ve noticed many empty holes in the wall around buildings in my town where payphones once were. It seems that they’re becoming a relic of the past. Are they? Has anyone else noticed payphones disappearing?
Are we always going to be stuck with them, though, for emergencies?
I’m guessing yes. I know prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. We don’t have cells and IMO we never will. (I’m just not that important, no one needs to speak to me that urgently.)
Occasionally, my husband will call from a pay phone. If he charges it to home it’s cost as much as $22.00 for less than a minute.
I don’t think they’re obsolete. They are just unprofitable. Only poor people generally need them. The last time my cell phone died, I was desperate to make a call and after about 20 minutes I managed to find one downtown in a bar. It was something like $1.50 a minute. Happily enough, I noticed recently that there is a payphone on the street that costs only a quarter. Poor people need to make a call every once in a while. I think the phone company should be required to subsidize an inexpensive payphone once every 1/2 mile or so in the business district as a community service.
BT, the main operator of pay-phones in the UK, are launching a survey of who actually uses these phones. By law they have to provide a certain number of pay-phones, but they want to close many of them because they lose money. Story here :- Times Online
Yes, if your cell phone battery goes out, you can almost never find a pay phone. You don’t have to be poor. And when you do find one, you have to have about ten quarters to make a call. So while Suzy the Ditz is gabbing on her cell phone about nothing of any importance because she’s just bored, you’re desperately trying to get change so you can tell your work that you’re stuck in traffic and going to be late.
American payphones are dodgy in that it takes a lot of money to pay for a decent length call but they only accept quarters. It drove me bananas the last time I was in O’Hare.
Looks like payphones are still going strong in New Zealand, at least.
Payphones in Antarctica? The mind boggles. All those toll calls must be where our Telecom makes a bob or two.
I remember, though, when banks of pay phone boxes lined the footpath outide central post offices here. That’s all changed now. I think there’s still a pay phone about a block away from where I live, and that’s the nearest. But yeah – if my landline goes down, I reach for the cellphone rather than pull on my raincoat and trudge around the corner to the pay phone.
I think payphones will always exist at transportation hubs (airports, rail stations, etc.). International travellers cannot depend on their cell phone to work halfway around the world, and may need payphones to place local calls once they reach their destination.
We didn’t fly directly into O’Hare – there are payphones at the international terminal. We flew into Dulles (Washington DC) and the connected to Chicago. And we needed to call our ride to say that we had arrived, and had our luggage, come get us. And there are only two or three pay phones, down at the far end of the baggage arrival area… and, of course, I was at the other end. A very kind maintenance man let me use his cell.
In short, the phone companies think they are not a money-maker anymore because they are rarely used, but when you need one and can’t find one, yer screwed.
For my regional TelCo, pay phones are no longer a revenue stream. Non-citeable sources indicate this is the trend more or less across the US.
Wikipedia Cite - “BellSouth is currently the only “Baby Bell” that does not operate pay telephones. By 2003, BellSouth’s payphone operation was discontinued because it had become too unprofitable, most likely due to the increased availability of cell phones. Cincinnati Bell has taken BellSouth’s place for payphones in northern BellSouth territory; independents have set in further south.”
They became obsolete years ago. Remember the scene in one of the Superman movies when Christopher Reeves rushes past a pay phone and can’t change to Superman because there was no concealing booth attached? Why have them if you can’t get undressed in them? :smack:
At one time I was an expert on this topic, because I worked for the pay phone division of my regional telco. Alas, one fine morning I was laid off because . . . well, because pay phones were becoming obsolete.
That was six years ago, and even at that time we were frantically ripping phones out of bars, restaurants, and bowling alleys, because it cost more to maintain and collect from them (and pay line charges to other divisions of the phone company) than they were worth. We were reduced to selling ad space on little stickies that we’d put on the phones, to try to rouse up extra revenue.
At that time, transportation sector pay phones (airport, bus, and train stations) were still viable, albeit in reduced numbers. We may have had 20 where we had had 40 in the 1980’s, but the 20 were still profitable, and there was active competition between ourselves and the independents for airport contracts. But then I got canned, so my knowledge is not current.
I use payphones often because I’m not going to spend upwards of $55/month to carry around a phone. Especially when my landline is less than $20/month.
The industry in Canada occasionally laments that penetration rates are lower than elsewhere… linky
… but fails to understand that as long as prices are four times higher than in the U.S., people won’t get cell phones just to have cell phones.
They’re getting pretty hard to find in Atlanta. I finally got a cellphone after I spent half an hour looking for a payphone, and then spent half a buck per five minutes for a local call. (When did they start doing that? Even in the '90s, you could put in a quarter and talk all day on a local call.) There are lots of empty places where payphones used to be; I think they’re just not being replaced when they break down or wear out.
The telecom companies have been subsidized in so many ways, I think they should be required to maintain at least some payphones, and at affordable rates.
Pay phones started going away a long time before cell phones became ubiquitous. I remember back in the late 80s and early 90s when there was concern that pay phones attracted drug dealers and other undesirables.
Thanks.