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More Payphone Stuff
• Nebraska Payphones
• Isla Flotantes (Peru payphone)
• Luxembourg Payphones
• Long Island City, Queens
• Pay Phones of Italy
• Buzios, Brasil
• Deadwood, Oregon
• Central Market. Nanning, China
• TCC Teleplex Internet Kiosk
• Payphone Graveyard, NYC
• North Dakota payphones
• Call the Vatican
• Payphone pictures of the world
World Payphone Photos
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Payphone News
The Bad Neighbor (Philadelphia City Paper) Do pay phones now do more harm than good? What is the story about this payphone?
Last call: Pay phones are on the way out Near the entrance of Ruby Tuesday’s stands a silver box – a shell of the pay phone that used to sit there, with only a rectangular cutout in its metal frame and a “dialing instructions” sign to show that it ever existed.
Once ubiquitous part of Americana becoming more and more scarce Is your cell phone dead and you need to let the family know you will be late? No problem, just pull in and use the pay phone, right? Not so fast, my friend. Finding a pay phone these days is not that easy.
Torontoist: Interesting Phone Booth Art This Toronto phone booth has saloon-style wooden doors!
Beware the Lowly Pay Phone, for it Preys on Thee Preying on the weak, desperate and cell-phone deprived, who often are making an emergency call home, [pay phone providers] await the next innocent victim. It’s a racket, and it's worthwhile stopping.
Yesterday's Opinion in Sprint v. APCC
Public Payphone for Net Generation? Kind of the retro-future public payphone of the internet era, the Handlink Wi-Fi access point saves time from all that messing about you sometimes have to do in internet cafs. (Gizmodo Australia)
UK: Will red telephone boxes disappear forever? BT hopes to axe 10,000 payphones that it says are unprofitable. Should anyone care?
Easton, New Jersey: Pay phones under threat The mayor's call to remove all outdoor pay phones has generated mixed reactions with some calling the idea good for public safety and others calling it bad public policy.
BBC: Campaign to save red Somerset phone boxes A Somerset councillor is trying to save 42 old-style red phone boxes from being removed.
UK Payphones Face Axe In BT Plan Payphones across west Wiltshire look set to vanish under BT's plans to scale back on its network across the country.
Shrinking Portals to the Past - New York Times With its taped advertisements and garbage-laden ledges, the pay phone in New York, that familiar feature of the streetscape, is becoming a grimy museum relic.
Sprint, AT&T and payphones go to the Supremes Sprint and AT&T next week will argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on revenue from payphones.
Pay phones cling to life in U.S. For the residents living in the 7 million households without a phone, pay phones are still a necessity.
NY Legislature Stops Unjust Prison Phone Contract From a Malkin & Ross press release: "The New York State Senate and Assembly reached agreement at the end of this year's legislative session on legislation that would treat prison telephone service as a right, not as a revenue generator....UK: BT Takes the Phone Out of the Box BT is re-vamping the design of its public payphones. The new design, by ad firm JCDecaux, accommodates more advertising on the phones in a drive to compensate for dwindling revenues from payphone usage. "The new, cutting edge design, is the...Canada: Remove pay phones to fight crime? "SaskTel is being urged to remove pay phones from an inner city neighbourhood in Regina amid accusations that they're facilitating drug dealing and prostitution. "But other people argue that the phones, located near the General Hospital in the Core neighbourhood,...Cell Phone Booths Find a Home at Libraries "There is a new take on phone booths at Eastern Connecticut State University, and it is designed to keep the library the way it is supposed to be - quiet." I looked at these booths last year, and expressed skepticism...Canada Payphones: Use Them Or Lose Them "According to Statistics Canada, the number of pay phones across Canada dropped by almost 40,000 -- or more than 20% -- from 178,116 in 1997 to 140,431 by the end of last year. The pace of removal is quickening, with...For every cell phone sold, 10 more pay phones turn to mold There are still holdouts. Luddites, you might say, who oppose new technologies. To a limited extent I am one such holdout, as is Mark Rutledge, at Reflector.com: "I've been sucked so far into this cell-phone culture, I completely forgot that...Canada: Not everyone's willing to hang up on pay phones The Payphone Project gets a mention in this story from Victoria, Canada, which explores ambivalence to the expected rate increase for calls made from Telus payphones. "Plenty of people eschew, can't afford, or just don't need cellphones. The question is...Japan: Payphones vanishing fast Despite their bleak future, pay phones can still serve as a vital communications link during times of disaster. Service for cellphones and home phones could be disrupted or knocked out by an earthquake, for example. However, public phone service will be available.MCI's Prison Payphone rates exploit poor families "This is a state-sponsored scam," said state Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford. "It's an outrageous intrusion on the rights of families with people in prison. And that's who bears this cost - the families." McDonald said the money generated from the calls should instead be spent on inmate re-entry programs, and he plans to work with state officials to implement such a reform.Canada: Pay phones provide a lifeline "Not surprisingly, your need for pay phones increases as your income decreases: 88 per cent of low-income Canadians use pay phones at least a few times a year, according to a 2003 national survey conducted by the Montreal-based Union des consommateurs. That includes 22 per cent who use pay phones daily."Nevada Payphone: A thing of the past? The Nevada Appeal accompanies its fine story about declining payphones with a strangely erotic photo of a rotary dial payphone.Supreme court rules in favor of payphone industry At issue are payments for coinless calls on Metrophones' payphones over Global Crossing's network. The calls involve special access codes such as 1-800 or 10-10-220.San Diego: Sun sets on beach pay phones The Union-Tribune's Michael Stetz writes: "Mark Thomas, who started The Payphone Project, digs pay phones. Thomas used to call them out of the blue and play a tape of one of his piano performances over the line to whomever answered. He liked the odd connection between perfect strangers. Today, most pay phones won't take incoming calls, though."World's most famous phone booth claims world record Scotland's Pennan phone box, declared by a local tourism board as "the most famous phone booth in the world," was the scene of record breaking achievement. 16 gymnasts filled the famous phone box, breaking the booth-stuffing record set in...Scotland claims "the most famous phone booth in the world"? Because of its central role in the movie "Local Hero," a phone booth in Pennan, Scotland has become one of Scotland's leading tourist attractions. While many calls come in to this phone, however, few calls seem to go out, causing...Two calls from a Texas payphone: $122.90! This story is from Texas, but could happen in any U.S. state. A man makes two phone calls from a payphone and gets socked with a bill for $122.90. This is a story to keep in mind the next time...Scotland: £560 for a call from a phone box? By BT Scotland's math, annual maintenance costs for a phone box are about £1,600. This story profiles a Scotland phone box that was only used for three calls in an entire year, making its cost-per-call ratio rather conspicuous.Uganda: Phone Operator Disconnects Client "There was drama in Nateete recently..." This all-too-short story reads like a screenplay-in-waiting. From this story, it sounds as if a man in Nateete, Uganda, used a community payphone to make a call. Africa is largely without any sort of...Penn State student asks: 'How do you make a collect call?" A long article from Penn State University's "Daily Collegian" describes the inexorable decline in payphones from the university's campus. Canadian company Freefone might be in line to replace college campus payphones with free (ad-supported) public phones, such as those seen...New York: Prisoners' lawsuit over payphone fees revived "The Court of Appeals, in a 4-2 decision, reversed a lower court's determination that the lawsuit should be dismissed for a lack of timeliness. That was incorrect, the high court ruled. While not making any judgment on whether inmates would...Payphones? Of course! The Daily Herald warns against getting ripped off by unscrupulous payphone operators, and also includes a few interesting facts and figures about the state of the payphone business. "Some billion and a half calls were made on pay phones last...When a serial murderer calls... from a payphone Here is an interesting story about one reporter's involvement in the infamous Zodiac serial murderer case. In September, 1969, the Zodiac called police from a payphone, bragging about his most recent murder. Unable to track payphones to exact locations, police fanned out to try and find a payphone with its receiver off the hook.New York: Subway Pay Phones Harder to Find It is fair to assert that most New Yorkers are probably indifferent to the decline in payphones in the subway system. Despite the fact that cell phones generally do not work in the city's subways, I would think that most cell-phone carrying straphangers are connected to the world constantly enough to a point where the brief time spent out of touch is a welcome respite, at least for a little while.Calling cards dropping their anonymous shield? For many years, one of the most frequently visited sections of The Payphone Project has been the pages explaining what it means when phone numbers such as (720) 587-9978 and (404) 461-9978 show up on your caller ID.Loren Everly: International Payphones By far the most impressive individual's collection of payphone pictures I have seen in a long time, Loren Everly has travelled the world keeping an eye out for, among other things, phone booths and payphones. As the number of... Other Payphone Project Stuff |
