There Are Still 100,000 Pay Phones In the US (cnn.com) 97
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Standard phone operation should be more like standard phone operation, right?
Re:Its easy to profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. There's enough of a risk of being raped while behind bars. Financial raping should be criminalized.
The revenue from the phone calls is only one benefit. The other benefit is that by jacking up the cost, we can reduce communications and break down family and community bonds, which is known to increase recidivism. This means repeat business for the prison, lucrative overtime pay for the guards, and even more profit for the phone contractor.
Win-win for the PIC [wikipedia.org].
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You'd almost think that the people behind for-profit prisons want to bring back slavery in this country.
There is plenty of evidence that for-profit prisons are a bad idea, but phone price-gouging happens in state run prisons as well. In California, a major obstacle to prison reform is the prison guard union, which has an unholy alliance with conservative politicians. Liberal legislators are afraid to stand up to them, because they have other priorities, and don't want to be smeared as "soft on crime" for advocating sensible policies.
Re:Its easy to profit (Score:5, Interesting)
Prison should be more like a five-star resort, right?
Yes. Better and more human prisons are correlated with lower recidivism. Norway has the best prisons [wikipedia.org] and one of the world's lowest rates of re-offense by ex-inmates.
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The "new" Norway full of Ahmeds and Tyrons won't be so successful on this metric.
Ahmed Behring Breivik being one fine example, right.
There's more to prison than just rehabilitation (Score:2)
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
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Look at statistics. Punishment does not act as a deterrent above a certain low level. A would-be offender won't stop and think "oh, if I get caught, I will get ten years in a bad prison instead of five years in a good prison, so I won't do the act after all".
The punishment in the US system isn't designed to be a deterrent to reduce crime, it's designed to be revenge to cater to the baser instincts of the unwashed masses.
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To be blunt, I don't fucking care. Punishment isn't just a means to an end, it is an end in its own right. What you call baser instincts most people would call justice and clearly you're just some naive little prick who's never been the victim or had a loved one who's been the victim of a serious crime.
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Prison should be more like a five-star resort, right?
Explain how your howaboutusm relates to his statement.
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Devil's Island is a French possession.
You're just full of interesting and relevant facts today, aren't you?
Uh, nope, today's the same as any other day, and you're still a knothead.
Sorry if I got anyone unnecessarily excited, there.
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Have you looked at the in room phone costs in five-star resorts? It seems prisons have at least something in common.
In NYC, it is all about ads (Score:2)
I expect most of their value is in the ads on the side of the phone booth.
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But no tart cards [wikipedia.org].
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Dear Superhero, (Score:5, Funny)
These booths are for the use of our paying customers.
Please limit your changing time if others are waiting.
-- Thank you.
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Have you seen how the 1960s cartoon Underdog leaves a booth quickly?
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Yeah, Wade. [youtube.com]
Re:What's a ... (Score:5, Insightful)
*Fingering away on my iShiney*, "What's a pay phone?"
That's already happened in Scandinavia... in 2015 [www.svt.se] they disappeared in Sweden, 01.01.2016 [dinside.no] it ended in Norway, 13.12.2017 [www.bt.dk] the last one disappeared in Denmark. Those who grow up today will never have seen a working phone booth.
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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 imp
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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.
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The phone booths where I live are all wi-fi hotspots now, if they're still there.
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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.
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That is how I get online (Score:4, Funny)
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28.8 bps is damned slow.
Even the old ASR-33 Teletypes, which typed 10 characters per second, were 110 baud.
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45.45, 50, 75, and 100 baud were all used by electromechanical teleprinters.
In the New York City area in the 1970s, we used numerous 75 baud current loop circuits in a bank transaction network, serving terminals at bank branch and merchant locations. It was said (unconfirmed) that these circuits were relatively inexpensive, and often were constructed of split pairs that would not be usable for voice. A single loop could serve a number of terminal units connected in series.
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I have one (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]) 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. :)
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I just bought something similar for my MIL, since she has trouble using a cellphone and a landline was near impossible to get installed. The one I bought was a panasonic cordless phone that has this functionality built into it.
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Nice tip, thank you. :)
This is not the least bit surprising (Score:3)
The last hand-cranked telephone was disconnected in the 1980s. [csmonitor.com], 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.
Next up, Fax Machines (Score:2)
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.
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I think that would be the last public cranked phone... Non-profit I work with had a working system for inter-building communications that worked up until about 2010 or so. A bunch of alkaline batteries would last for a couple of years, and the bell was loud enough to hear over the noise of our power plant.
I've since replaced it with fiber and VOIP, with a loud mechanical ringer in the generator hall... When the power goes out, the two-way radios work just as well, as you don't have to listen to them over th
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I can still remember a brand new hand-cranked telephone being installed in the family farmhouse in Ontario, 1957.
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Is a cell phone a necessity in 2018? (Score:2)
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 f
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When hte boom in cell phones started happening, I thought that eventually a pay phone booth would turn into... a phone booth, bring your own phone. Small counter to put stuff on, padded bar to lean on, some way of providing a quick charge, sound proof, perhaps even a faraday cage and a little tiny picocell for your phone to connect to with a guaranteed 5 bars/dots/whatevers (i'm not a radio/electromagnetic radiation guy - would that fry your brain in your head?). Want another 3 minutes of time? Insert ano
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planning a whole day in advance built discipline in people before easy access to phones was common
It certainly affected efficiency. I once tried to meet a friend en route to a beach vacation. We were traveling from opposite directions, and we agreed to try to meet around noon, and to do so at the first gas station on the right after crossing a certain bridge. Well, the first gas station on the right was twenty miles down the road. I stopped, filled up, bought a snack, and sat down to wait a little while. After about twenty or thirty minutes, I decided to double back just to be sure he hadn't gone somew
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Airports (Score:2)
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You have to activate a calling plan *before* you leave? You live in a previous decade, do you?
First thing that happens when I turn on my phone after landing in a foreign country is that I get an SMS from my telco (Telenor) telling me what my pricing/plan options are for making calls there. Usually offering a couple of decent choices.
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Sometimes they're reinstalled (Score:2)
In some cases, removed pay phones have been restored by request: Pay phone at ranger station near Big Four Ice Caves is reinstalled [seattletimes.com].
And who remembers terms like COCOT [thefreedictionary.com]?
Bait (Score:2)
in hospitals do this for free quick calls (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Still on BART (Score:2)
The original free calling plan (Score:1)
Was a 6.5536 MHz crystal.
Anyone?
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Allegedly this would then allow you to dial any number and use it without paying. Including international ones. Allegedly. Not that I would know this for certain you understand, and I certainly wouldn't have used it to keep in touch with a Boston-based university friend during some holidays during the early 90s.
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That's why (Score:2)