< Columbus: Wireless dealing a blow to pay-phones | | Maine towns queue up for access to public telephones > Scranton: Pay phones disappearing August 23, 2006 Look for a couple of quotes from me in this story by Coulter Jones, which also mentions the Freefone business model that I think represents a substantial part of the future of the public telephone. "In the past nine years, a million pay phones have been shut off in the United States — nearly a 50 percent decrease. Competition with cellular phone companies and maintenance costs have led to a 10 percent to 12 percent drop in the number of pay phones each year for the past decade, according to the Federal Communications Commission." Read more at the Scranton Times-Tribune