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Cellphones

NYC Removes Last Payphone From Service (cnbc.com) 107

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-an-era dept.
New York City removed its last public payphone on Monday. The boxy enclosures were once an iconic symbol across the city. But the rise of cellphones made the booths obsolete. CNBC reports: The effort to replace public pay telephones across the city kicked off in 2014 when the de Blasio administration solicited proposals to reimagine the offering, the city's Office of Technology and Innovation said in a news release. Officials selected CityBridge to develop and operate LinkNYC kiosks, which offer services such as free phone calls, Wi-Fi and device charging. The city began removing street payphones in 2015 to replace them with the LinkNYC kiosks. There are nearly 2,000 kiosks across the city, according to a map from LinkNYC. The last public pay telephone will be displayed at the Museum of the City of New York as part of an exhibit looking back at life in the city before computers.
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NYC Removes Last Payphone From Service More

NYC Removes Last Payphone From Service

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  • Insert Superman joke here (Score:5, Funny)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @06:15AM (#62560930) Homepage
    I recall Clark Kent was always rushing into phone boxes to change into Superman. I guess he is not welcome in NYC anymore?

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      I recall Clark Kent was always rushing into phone boxes to change into Superman.

      No, you didn't [cbr.com]. It's one of those things people assumed happened [stackexchange.com], but either didn't happen at all or not the way they thought.

      • Re:Insert Superman joke here (Score:4, Informative)

        by altp ( 108775 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @08:10AM (#62561138)

        In one of the Superman movies, they riffed on this. Clark looks at the phone booth, completely open, and moves on to somewhere else.

        • Superman 4, he used a phone booth. I'm positive that isn't the only time, but I'm not going to watch 3 full length movies to find it. However, here it is in number 4 jump to 1m5s, https://www.cbr.com/superman-c... [cbr.com]

          • He didn't in the first movie - that was the joke, no phone both to change. So he goes into a stores revolving door and super speeds around the revolving door and changes into his super suite.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by whitroth ( 9367 )

          No, Superman I. He's running to change from Clark, and glances at a phone-on-a-stick. All the audience in the seventies got it and laughed.

          The original change-in-a-phone-booth was from the forties, when phone booths were made out of wood, not glass.

      • Your linked article says he didn't do it very often, not that he didn't do it at all.

        • The article says it didn't happen at all in the old George Reeves' television show. He did do it in at least one of the comics, apparently; and on Smallville he did it a few times.

          I think it was the first Christopher Reeves' Superman movie where they had him look for a phone booth, only to be confounded by one of those open-from-the-waist-down kiosks.

          Side note: I only saw a few of the old George Reeves' episodes a couple decades after they were made; but, even as a little kid, I didn't think he looked very

      • Your highly misleading comment indicates that it never happened but the link you provided shows it happened repeatedly, as early as a comic strip in 1942. I would say that is pretty strong evidence about why it's associated with the character.

      • No, you didn't. It's one of those things people assumed happened, but either didn't happen at all or not the way they thought.

        Well it at least it actually happened at least once in the proper context in the Comics.

        If you want an example of something that didn't happen the way people thought. Lost in Space's "Danger, Will Robinson!" was only uttered once by a malfunctioning robot.

    • He just has to start changing in Apple stores.

      (Also that was fuckin Metropolis you dumbass)

    • The empty husks are still around; they're just ad-hoc urinal stalls now.

      To quote William Gibson: "The street finds its own uses for things."

    • & where are inebriated people supposed to take a piss now? BTW, London once got rid of its iconic red phone boxes. It didn't take long for them to realise that they were a huge tourist attraction (despite the unpleasant smell inside) & decided to reinstate them.

  • LinkNYC rocks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by echo123 ( 1266692 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @06:46AM (#62560978)
    Seriously, LinkNYC used existing infrastructure to provide wifi and USB re-charging service. That's a worthy upgrade! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Never mind those dirty old phone booths, good riddance!
    • The monetary value of the coins held inside the phone booths alone made them unrealistic and useless over the long-term. Not to mention costs involving the collection of the coins, (of the operable machines on collection day).

      • Re:LinkNYC rocks (Score:4, Informative)

        by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @07:47AM (#62561074)

        Here in Australia, Telstra (the operator of most payphones in the country and formerly the government owned monopoly telephone company) has made payphones free for most calls within Australia.

        Still plenty of them around as well including at train and bus stations, at shopping centres, in regional towns and highway roadhouses/truck stops, in busy city areas, at hospitals, on university campuses and many other places.

        • I know. Everyone outside of the US is very contrarian and progressive and they maintain their public phones with aplomb.
          • 1988, moving to a new area, I arrive from my previous place, and need to call the landlord to get a key. Taco Bell should have a pay phone. It does, but it also has a guy wearing a pager, no shirt, and athletic shorts in Crips colors standing by the phone. Next parking lot over had a less threateningly occupied phone next to the drug store. Eventually there were calls to remove pay phones as attractive nuisances.

        • Here in Australia, Telstra (the operator of most payphones in the country and formerly the government owned monopoly telephone company) has made payphones free for most calls within Australia.

          Still plenty of them around as well including at train and bus stations, at shopping centres, in regional towns and highway roadhouses/truck stops, in busy city areas, at hospitals, on university campuses and many other places.

          I could imagine the headlines in the USA if the government decided to do this.

          • I could imagine the headlines in the USA if the government decided to do this.

            We don't cotton to no socialism here in this country, son.

          • Imagine away, since the government of NY is providing this service as the summary states.

            LinkNYC kiosks, which offer services such as free phone calls, Wi-Fi and device charging.

            Oh the humanity!

      • The monetary value of the coins held inside the phone booths alone made them unrealistic and useless over the long-term. Not to mention costs involving the collection of the coins, (of the operable machines on collection day).

        The coin collection problem can be mitigated through the use of smart cards, preferably low-value prepaid cards, so their loss wouldn't be too great. Regular debit cards of course could also be used.

        • The coin collection problem can be eliminated by just making it free. There is very little money to be collected anyway. And nobody has coins or the right cards these days.

          Telstra in Australia wants to keep the phones for their real estate on busy street corners. They advertise Telstra. They provide a Wifi hot spot for Telstra customers. Maybe even very local 5g.

          And it provides a service for the few that have no mobile phones, or if you get caught out with a flat battery. But you would have to remembe

    • Don't forget small towns affected with bushfires and floods. The cellphone tower had 3-4 hours - then dead, nothing else. The payphone kept on working. As for the newer street 'furniture' how do they run a profit? Do they listen in on all your calls? Do they read your emails? . Yeah, better you have a VPN. To get this in perspective, have you even been caught high and dry, because the telco's circuits were all out?
    • The consortium behind New York City’s LinkNYC kiosks is ‘delinquent’ and owes the city millions https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]

      The Links, as the nine-foot-tall kiosks were dubbed, were supposed to replace the city’s pay phones, providing free domestic phone calls, Wi-Fi, and USB charging ports. They had been projected to bring in an estimated $500 million in revenue for the city via advertising on the 55-inch screens. The CityBridge consortium includes Intersection, of which Al

  • What about the telephone sanitizers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @06:50AM (#62560990) Homepage

    But what about the telephone sanitizers? Are they out of work? Will their decisively significant contribution to society just go unnoticed?
    Unless Elon's got them tickets to Ark B?

    • Maybe they can find work sanitizing people's cellphones. I mean, how many times have you heard someone in the bathroom stall next to yours, tapping away on their phone? Do you want to borrow that person's phone? I hate to borrow anyone's phone, because...who knows where it's been!

      • Maybe they can find work sanitizing people's cellphones. I mean, how many times have you heard someone in the bathroom stall next to yours, tapping away on their phone? Do you want to borrow that person's phone? I hate to borrow anyone's phone, because...who knows where it's been!

        That's a feature, not a bug.

        Well, technically that may be a feature and a bug.

      • Are you kidding? When I'm in the bathroom I'm always too focused on the latest /. post to even notice if anyone else is tapping their foot in the next stall let alone tapping their phones. In fact my battery died while I was on the toilet once and I did borrow the phone from the guy in the next stall. I knew exactly where it had been. A toilet stall just like the one my phone was in. I told him it was an emergency and he was out of toilet paper so I had leverage. In truth I just wanted to finish the sud

  • Does the city actually own this payphone? They were historically owned by the local telephone companies.

    • Maybe we should go fund me a startup that will preserve the payphone? "....I had the blues but I shook them loose... from "After Hours", A Tribe Called Quest.

      • I'm not even sure why this is huge news, they are removing payphones and offering free wifi, charging, and phone service. So rather than charging for the service, they are giving it away by supporting it with ads. Now the phone call is free instead of pay, why use the big heavy old payphones, when they are not needed anymore?

        • Nothing is free moron and it is not all peaches cream.

          "They had been projected to bring in an estimated $500 million in revenue for the city via advertising on the 55-inch screens."

          "But the company is “delinquent” in its payments to the city, she told New York City Council. “CityBridge owes the City tens of millions of dollars, going back to [fiscal year] 19,” Tisch said. “All of this is against the backdrop of millions of dollars in advertising revenue that CityBridge ha

          • So, because the company has missed payments, I am a moron? I indicated that it was being paid for by advertising, not that it cost nothing. That means for the users, it is free, which it is.

            You need to work on your reading and interpersonal skills, or people will just ignore everything you have to say as they write you off as a mental case.

      • I wonder. If you want a payphone can you still get one? It's purely for nostalgia value. I wonder if the city would allow me to put a working phone booth in my front yard - more for the nostalgia than anything else. Local calls could even be free. I can't find a thing about payphones in my HOA covenants although maybe a phonebooth qualifies as a "permanent structure". I might have to build a gazebo like my neighbor and just put a payphone inside it but that kind of ruins the effect.

        Actually, what I real

        • I wonder. If you want a payphone can you still get one?

          Look near your police station. Got to have a nearby payphone for those "anonymous tips".

  • I guess that means Neo is fucked then?

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by That's What She Said ( 1289344 )

      I guess that means Neo is fucked then?

      Since the Matrix mimics the world at some point in the 90's (IIRC), the phone booths will always be there.

    • They kind of addressed this in the last movie. Don't watch it unless you're pretty bored. It seems more like fan fiction than a real Matrix movie.

      • They kind of addressed this in the last movie. Don't watch it unless you're pretty bored. It seems more like fan fiction than a real Matrix movie.

        I dunno... I felt I got my money's worth from Matrix Resurrections.

        Of course, I watched it for free on HBO Max...

  • Payphone cut
    Like bristles but
    We saw what
    Will from pocket jut
    Burma Shave

  • Maybe the last *phone booth*? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AntronArgaiv ( 4043705 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @07:36AM (#62561050)

    I've noticed payphones are still to be found (but you have to look for them) at bus and train stations and at airports.

    Phone booths are definitely an endangered species. They also command a decent price on eBay. Moving them is not trivial. They are large and they are heavier than you might think. I helped a friend move one. It took three of us, two furniture dollies and a liftgate rental truck.

    • Ranger stations along the Appalachian Trail [wikipedia.org] have them for long distance hikers. I had a group of Cub Scouts at a ranger station and was like, "HEY KIDS! Check this out!!". They'd never seen one before, and probably will never see another.

  • Payphones are on their way out... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by That's What She Said ( 1289344 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @07:45AM (#62561066)

    Sadly... IMO, payphones are very useful, for example, when your cellphone's battery is dead.

    An anecdote: when I first got an Apple Watch, I decided to go cycling without my phone (one less thing to carry on me, right?). I thought: "if I have a problem, I just push the bike to the next payphone and call my wife". In fact, I had problems that day, which got even worse... as I couldn't find a single damn payphone! I had to ask some random guy on the street to lend me his cellphone.

    Up until then, I had never realized payphones where being phased out. And that wasn't even New York, it was a small city in the state of São Paulo, Brazil!

    • Re:Payphones are on their way out... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @07:52AM (#62561080)

      Up until then, I had never realized payphones where being phased out

      Tell me about it... I stopped by my local Western Union the other day to send a telegram, and they told me they discontinued that service some time ago! Apparently they specialize in money transfers to Nigeria nowadays.

      Times are a-changin...

      • It's really strange when we come to think about it, but it wasn't really that longe ago that e-mails and such were not accepted as evidence in court, so if one wanted to legally confirm the receiver got the message, the telegram was the way to go.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        Up until then, I had never realized payphones where being phased out

        Tell me about it... I stopped by my local Western Union the other day to send a telegram, and they told me they discontinued that service some time ago! Apparently they specialize in money transfers to Nigeria nowadays.

        Times are a-changin...

        Telegrams are still around. WU sold their telegram business off but it's still going. Telegrams are so ingrained in the laws of many countries they still have some utility for businesses.

    • Payphones will not recharge your cellphone via USB. These modern NYClink pieces of street furniture will [wikipedia.org]. Is this technical website dominated by Luddites or what?
    • How many people even memorize phone numbers anymore? A payphone is of no use for calling people if your head is not a phone directory.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        I never had a problem remembering numbers whether phone numbers or pi to 50 digits so making calls without a contacts list isn't an issue for me though I suspect I'm in a tiny minority.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          I suspect I'm in a tiny minority.

          I suspect you are correct. If my wife or mom don't answer their phone I'd be screwed. Those are the only two numbers I could pull out of my memory.

    • for example, when your cellphone's battery is dead.

      Why not use a public charging station, or go buy a pre charged battery pack, or go rent a temporary charging brick like a normal person.

      Buggy whip salesmen moved on, we didn't lament that their demise because we worried about our cars breaking down, we fixed the damn cars.

      Modern problems, modern solutions.

  • Cap'n Krunch wept. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @08:03AM (#62561112) Homepage Journal

    And 2600 played a dirge on a tone generator.

    • You deserve kudos for even knowing who Cap'n Krunch is! Much love to 2600...
  • Or we will miss scenes like these ones:
    The Blues Brothers [youtube.com]
    Get Smart [youtube.com]
    Le Magnifique [youtube.com]
    .... insert Superman scenes here....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 )

      Not to mention Phone Booth [youtube.com]. Heck, that was filmed in 2002 and even then they had trouble in doing the booth scenes because they were going away...

  • I think it's probably a wise choice for them, though I admit pay phones have saved my butt a few times on nights out drinking when I went to call a cab and found that my cell phone was dead.

    Granted, that hasn't happened in 12-15 years now, but I was grateful to find one at the time.

    • you didn't have taxis patrolling for riders? never had to use a phone to get a cab in Chicago, I'd think NYC such a city.

      • This was in Columbia, SC. Definitely no taxi's patrolling - you have to call if you want one.

        • being a drunkard in the Bible Belt? wow brave. Come up North, the bars are open longer and the grocery stores and pharmacies have booze.

  • I grew up in the city in the '60s and '70s; working as a bike messenger in high school, my first stop was to get a roll of DIMES from the dispatcher, so I could call into the office for my next run.

    On the chrome coin box of every pay phone in the Five Boroughs, some little old lady had scratched the words "WORSHIP GOD" with the pointy end of a church key-style can opener. Every single pay phone in every neighborhood. She had the grudging respect of a lot of graffiti artists because of sheer coverage (and

  • Guess it's time to finally throw out my rollerblades and old acoustic coupler. And my old laptop even though the screen still looks crispy in the dark. End of an era. Tip one out for the King of Nynex.

    Posted from my

    • Guess it's time to finally throw out my rollerblades and old acoustic coupler.

      The acoustic coupler belongs in a museum!

      What's wrong with the rollerblades? Has Apple introduced iFeet or something? Are you just too fat?

      • Guess it's time to finally throw out my rollerblades and old acoustic coupler.

        The acoustic coupler belongs in a museum!

        What's wrong with the rollerblades? Has Apple introduced iFeet or something? Are you just too fat?

        The movie reference was lost with your UID?

        C'mon now, I hope you were only joking.

    • Amsterdam welcomes you and your rollerblades to skate the streets every Friday night [fridaynightskate.com], all year long, weather permitting. It is imperative to check the website for a 'thumbs up' before your evening commitment. A certain dregree of skill, a helmet and other safety stuff, and lights are kind of a requirement. Dutch skaters are really hard core when it comes to skating, (or rowing in the icy Winter, or... Dutch people will not compromise merely for weather conditions so do not expect special treatment under any

  • To all those who say there's no use for payphones (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2022 @09:57AM (#62561368) Homepage

    You clearly don't know someone who's been mugged for their phone. Sure, you can ask a stranger for their phone if one is around or go into a shop (if they're open) and hope for the best, but would be nicer if there was a public phone nearby you could go and use.

    IMO there should be a minimum number of payphones per square mile. They won't get used much but when someone needs one they often REALLY need one.

    • but would be nicer if there was a public phone nearby you could go and use.

      In what world would it be nicer to go to a dingy payphone after being mugged than simply get help from a stranger.

      I mean with a username like Viol8 I get it, you're not a people person, but seriously man phones are dime a dozen. You'll get by without a payphone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        Not all strangers are friendly or want to help especially if its 1am. But then you probably live in some middle class surburban area and don't have a clue.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      You clearly don't know someone who's been mugged for their phone. Sure, you can ask a stranger for their phone if one is around or go into a shop (if they're open) and hope for the best, but would be nicer if there was a public phone nearby you could go and use.

      IMO there should be a minimum number of payphones per square mile. They won't get used much but when someone needs one they often REALLY need one.

      And are you willing to pay for this?

      If you're willing to pay for that, why not put the money towards getting rid of the reasons that causes such frequent muggings?

      I'm not worried about getting mugged here in the UK, at worst we've got people trying to steal phones from the unaware zombies who are daft enough to wander around with their heads buried in their phones, but yeah, the man on the Clapham omnibus really doesn't worry about muggings. However I do like to travel and sometimes this means travel

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "And are you willing to pay for this?"

        Yes. In the scheme of things it would cost buttons.

        "but yeah, the man on the Clapham omnibus really doesn't worry about muggings"

        Uh huh.

        "In the UK, if someone does swipe your phone you can generally rely on the kindness of British people and businesses"

        Well I live in London mate and there are certain parts late at night you wouldn't go alone and as for kindness of strangers there, yeah right. But if you've only ever grown up in some nice rural town where the worst crime

  • Around 30 years ago I was working on a new equipment trial in (coastal city) telco central office. This office had quite a few SLC-96 digital loop carrier CO terminals in one frame. These have service specific plug-in cards, and a number of these were filled mostly with Coin service cards. Frame tech explained that these served Navy piers, and that one could see most of the Busy indicators light at once when a ship came into port. During one interval while staring at my BERT numbers and alarms status, I
  • *sniff*...but-but.. what will become of my beloved red box?

  • After Sandy hit in 2012, I was in downtown Manhattan. It looked like a scene out of an apocalyptic film. No one was around. In Manhattan and no one was to be seen! That's the same level of creepiness as bumping into a troupe of investment bankers on the Appalachian trail.

    My cell phone had died. I ran out the battery a couple of nights before listening to the outside world where people were. And now there was nobody around and my phone didn't work.

    Did I mention that I really needed a shower by this point, se

  • Here's a photo I took just today in Manhattan. This is one of three or four public pay phones on West End Avenue.

    https://photos.app.goo.gl/DA6q... [app.goo.gl]

  • Because most people don't want to go up to a phone box that is covered in graffiti, reeks of urine and booze, and is missing it's reciever with the armored cable dangling down with exposed wires sticking out. Also, pay phones in this condition are a blight and attracts crime.

  • Outside the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, there is a row of payphones. Mostly for freshly released inmates who no longer have a working cell phone or really any personal property on them.

  • First I hear about this LinkNYC (I don't visit NYC a lot) but I see they are 9.5 foot tall. might they also be 1 foot deep and 4'7" wide?

  • I once thought there used to be so many phone booths, and now they have no purpose. Somebody must have a bunch they would like to be rid of cheap.

    Imagine an old phone booth as an enclosure for a large format 3d printer!

    But the only ones I could find were going for "antique" prices. Who has so much money to spend on something that large just to waste so much space as a retro-decoration? What's wrong with people?!?!

    Well.. with all the urine comments I see here maybe it's for the better. Or maybe just don't ge

  • New York City removed its last public payphone on Monday.

    Look at the Snopes fact check. [snopes.com]

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